


New Axioms

by AestasIgnis



Series: New Axioms [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka "fuck around and find out" Tano, Angst, Battle Couple, Crimson Dawn (Star Wars), Dathomir (Star Wars), Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Masturbation, Mention of past relationships, Mostly Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Trauma and Healing, depictions of ptsd/trauma, graphic depictions of death, non-major character death, not a Maul redemption fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:08:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AestasIgnis/pseuds/AestasIgnis
Summary: “You’re not the one I’m here to speak to.” She kept her tone neutral, echoing Saw’s words three days prior. Dryden Vos gave her a withering look, but relented after a moment, standing from his couch with a flourish.As he brushed past her, he whispered, “Saw Gererra is playing with fire, Togruta. My benefactor may be interested in your propositions, but I don’t have such faith.”---Speculation on the early years of the rebellion, and how familiar foes may make amends for their past.Long form story, somewhat slow burn. Content warnings are in a list in the chapter 1 notes.Complete as of 18 June 2020Final edit and key art FINALLY updated as of 2 November 2020
Relationships: Darth Maul & Ahsoka Tano, Darth Maul/Ahsoka Tano
Series: New Axioms [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773886
Comments: 154
Kudos: 312





	1. Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy! First time posting a fic online, pretty much ever. I've been interested in Maul/Ahsoka's dynamic pretty much since Rebels season 2, and the clone wars finale just jump started that old flame. If anyone has a suggestion on how to quickly and reliably deal with paragraph indents on AO3 I would love you for eternity. 
> 
> Not beta read, self edited a few times  
> \---
> 
> Set approx. 7+ years after the events at the end of TCW season 7. This should be more or less canon compliant, as the public canon currently stands, though there may be a few stretches here and there for the sake of plot and dialogue. This is mainly an exploration of Ahsoka's journey and trauma, though I am basing some of her coping off of my own personal methods. They are not intended to be either good or bad. They are simply what I know.
> 
> This is about growth and grey morality.
> 
> \---  
>  **Content warnings are as follows, and show up generally in this order:**
> 
> Graphic depictions of violence and gore  
> Death  
> Light mentions of fantasy drug use and prostitution  
> References to masturbation  
> Explicit Sexual content  
> \--oral, PiV, Rough (LIGHT but consensual physical harm, biting, scratching, etc.) power play type stuff, light femdom, maybe a minor breeding kink (but it’s only a line or two? idk?)  
> Unhealthy coping mechanisms and PTSD/Trauma responses  
> Mentions of systematic oppression, fantasy-racism mildly implied (Blink and you miss it though. Sadly, this comes with the source material a bit.)  
> Unhealthy relationship practices  
> Star Wars Rebels s2 spoilers

#### 12 BBY - 2nd standard month

### Wrean, Partisan Branch Camp

“They’re not happy with you.”

Her words were met with a wheezing laugh - hearty, not callous as the man in front of her was predisposed to be. It was strange, meeting up with Saw Gererra after all this time. Ahsoka felt something of a kinship with him as they moved through one war into the next in parallel. Where she once coached his rebels on Onderon, he offered her the invaluable knowledge of a time-worn revolutionary. Bail called him an anarchist, she called him a friend.

“And yet! Here you stand, ready to take me up on this offer. Ready to make deals with the devil.” Gererra’s voice boomed through the crowded room, echoing off of the glass terminals before getting lost among the mob. He placed a hand on Ahsoka’s shoulder, surprisingly light, and guided her to one of the rooms at the back. 

“ _They_ aren’t happy with you, but you know I’m not interested in their senatorial espionage Saw,” He chuckled again at her words, as he tapped in a long pass code to open the bulky door. “It feels good to be hands-on again.” She couldn’t help how heavy her words sounded. Saw nodded, understanding the toll her hiding had taken on her. It was nothing they had not discussed before.

The aperture - an old Republic-era style blast door, retrofitted into the base - stuttered open to allow them access. While the console room was bustling and smoky with Saw’s men milling around, this was nothing more than a glorified droid closet. In the middle of the room sat a generator, and attached to it was a sorry excuse for a holoprojector system. The walls were solid stone all around. It was cold and uncomfortable, but the bench facing the projector was as worn and inviting as anything else in the slipshod base.

“Old tech. Altered to make it harder to detect without direct line access.” Saw explained as he walked around to boot the system up. Ahsoka felt her heart pick up pace, returning her grey hood to its position atop her montrals. He had assured her that this contact was no admirer of the Empire, and they would not be sold out. No matter how much Ahsoka prodded, she had been given little detail on who she would actually be dealing with - only that the person she wanted to talk to was not the one “in charge” as he put it. Clearly, whomever she was about to deal arms with was ardent about secrecy. She was sick of the hiding, but willing to play the game.

The ticking of Saw’s fingers along the console were short and fast, absorbed by the cold walls around them. A figure appeared in the hologram, patchy and shuttering. As Gererra cursed quietly and continued working the dials to clear the picture up, Ahsoka stepped _just_ far enough around the projector that she could see the figure’s face properly, but would not be picked up on the image herself.

“You’re late again Gererra.” The humanoid man on the other end was poised, exuding a certain gaudy aura that could only fit a man who made his living off of the backs of others. He was the polar opposite of Saw in every respect. “You know I don’t take kindly to your presumptuous calls”

“You answered didn’t you? Don’t try to bluff Vos, you’re not good at it.” The hologram grimaced in response, and Saw cut in before he could rebut, “Get off the com, you’re not the one we need to speak to.”

“We? You’re treading a thin line here G-”

“I’m entitled to my secrets too Dryden, now get off the damn line.”

Vos looked ready to cut the transmission then and there, but hesitated and hit mute instead. His hologram looked up at something unseen behind his desk’s projector. Though it was pointless, Ahsoka followed his line of sight to the rough-hewn stone behind Saw, and for a moment was lost in its imperfections. Something was off. Not wrong, but different. Unusual, but not unfamiliar. The cold atmosphere of the room suddenly felt on fire. The com unmuted as Dryden Vos gave his seat up with a muttered ‘consider yourself lucky.’ Ahsoka’s montrals strained, listening as the shuffling of fabric was replaced by a repetitive metallic thudding, intermixed with the hiss of hydraulics. Her sight remained locked on the wall behind her.

“An eye for an eye, Gererra. Who have you brought me?”

The wall Ahsoka stared at so intently began to crack as the Force billowed around her in an invisible cloud, pieces chipping off to scatter onto Saw’s shoulders below.

“Ahsoka?” A whisper from Saw, likely imperceptible on the other com line. Her fingers felt ready to break with how tightly her hands had clenched. She breathed heavily through her nostrils and looked down to Saw, her friend and ally ... whom she would talk to later.

“Alone, Saw. Please.” Some deep part of her despised how distant her voice was, she promised to never return to this state of mind, yet here it was again. Here _he_ was again. She should have known from the constricting atmosphere. She should have known from the Force.

Saw got up, leaving slowly but respecting her wish for privacy. Once the door shut, Ahsoka tore off her hood in a final bid to get the manic energy building up within her out. She centered herself as much as was possible with the Force thrumming as it was, before straightening her back and confronting the hologram. Maul’s eyes pierced her own. She was still standing out of the line of the holoprojector’s camera, yet his head was turned to stare directly at her. Ahsoka found she couldn’t look away. He looked just as harsh and brazen as she remembered. As she took slow, deliberate steps to the bench - finally in his own hologram’s view - their eyes remained ever connected and unwavering.

“Ahsoka Tano lives.” Each word dripped from his tongue like he was reveling in the way they felt to say. They hung in the silence for a long moment. “What brings you to call _me_ of all people, Lady Tano? Expecting me to gloat about it all?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.” The distant voice still superseded her own.

“Hmm, rather masochistic for a Jedi trainee. Let’s see, as I recall, I gave you ample opportunity to-”

“That wasn’t an invitation. I’m here to talk business, Maul.” She forced the fire back into her voice to stop him from toying with her, and continued through gritted teeth as he sneered. “Though, last I checked, you were no longer affiliated with Crimson Dawn.”

“Last you _checked,_ ” He leaned forward, baring his own teeth in a grotesque grin, “the Pykes and Black Sun were not affiliated either.” 

So, she had correctly assumed he was still in control of the old spice and trafficking rings in some capacity, and that the Shadow Collective still kept their ties. They openly despised Crimson Dawn - because of that, it had seemed the safest option to buy from out of the three. This was all meant to be an equation where he was not a variable, yet here he sat. Ahsoka crossed her arms over her chest, an old habit of defiance. “You pull the strings from deep in your web, keep them at each other's throats, and profit regardless of the outcome.”

“It’s incredible how well it works. Such is life in the shadows.” He steepled his hands, shrugging as if it were the most obvious adage in the galaxy.

She scoffed openly, “Do you have the Hutts under your thumb too? The Brood?”

“The gamblers of the Haxion Brood are a pointless endeavor. The Hutts... Perhaps one day they will rejoin.” He smiled, self-satisfied with whatever nebulous plan he had, though it looked more like a grimace with his sharp tattoos. 

Ahsoka felt sick to her stomach. “So, the once proud Sith has now fully resigned himself to lying among the bantha.”

Maul’s deep growl caused the com to stutter, “All this time and you are still dogmatic as ever. Look around you! You sit within damp caves among the scoundrels and the malcontent of the Galaxy, who thrive on nothing but their own disorder. I thought you were not a Jedi Lady Tano, why bother acting like one when the company you keep would see you knocked off your pedestal the moment you regain it?”

“For the same reason you bother with your criminals - You ache for power, control, because it’s all you’ve been trained for. I’ve been trained to fight. So that’s what I do. I’ll deal with the outcome when I get there.” Ahsoka was opening up more than she had intended, but her personal vendetta against Maul was not going to blind her of her goal. She had promised Bail and Mothma the resources - on the conditions that no questions be asked - and she had no intention to let this fall through just because of her past with the Zabrak.

She took a breath, set her jaw, and ignored the way his golden eyes cut into her every move. “We are forming a handful of rebel factions. They’re small and in need of resources. Ships that can’t be traced, munitions, the standard stuff. With luck they will become self-sufficient and rejoin when the time is right, but _for now_ we need a source. Saw led me to you.”

He considered her words for a moment, jaw grinding slightly. “I admit, I am surprised your little rebel alliance is taking help from Gererra’s Partisans, let alone Crimson Dawn.”

“They’re not. I am.”

He looked genuinely stunned at that. “Your senators don’t know about this?” 

“They know what they need to. No more.” Maul was silent, hands balled into a loose grasp near his jaw as he thought. She could feel the near imperceptible shifting of the Force as he weighed the information.

“And in return?”

“Credits, and a chance to do something good for once.” He rolled his eyes as she continued, “As long as we have a supply coming in, the Senators will pay up. Their Core world treasuries won’t miss a few credits here and there.”

“Your passion is something to be admired, Lady Tano.” He tilted his head lightly, expression indiscernible. “You would have made a good Sith.”

“Do we have a deal?”

“Perhaps I was too quick to bring up your _former_ title. You have certainly changed from what they formed you into. From the young woman I once met.” Ahsoka narrowed her eyes at him but Maul continued, deathly quiet. “How the mighty have fallen they might say.”

“This is - _You_ are - simply a necessary evil I’m sparing the others of dealing with.”

“Rationalize it however you will my Lady, in the end you are lying with the bantha just as much as I.” He sighed, suddenly sounding weary and hardened past his years, “Come to Hosnian Prime, Vos’ ship will be docked there in three cycle’s time for a connection he has on the Corellian Trade Spine. We can _finalize_ this, face to face.”

### Deep Space, Mid Rim

Their old ship shuttered deeply as it took the jump to hyperspace. As the bolts of her walls rattled with the movement Ahsoka finally let out the hiccuping sob she had been holding in. Though the freighter Saw had lent her was rough around the edges and in dire need of maintenance, it was large enough for their small group to have somewhat private rooms. ‘ _Elbow room, a small blessing,’_ she thought dryly. 

After Ahsoka cut the transmission with Maul she had left the room quickly, intending to return to her personal x-wing and leave the planet then and there. Saw had intercepted her immediately, offering a larger ship and some of his crew; his way of apologizing for something he didn’t quite understand. Once the dust had settled, they sat together.

_Why wouldn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you trust me?_

Her breathing stuttered as she now sat on the threadbare cot, recalling their conversation while trying and failing to center herself yet again. She had known for a long time that Maul was alive in the underbelly of the galaxy, but _seeing_ him… she was unprepared. Behind the lids of her shut eyes were scenes from Mandalore, the Star Destroyer bridge, the cold wreckage on that moon -- all played back in brutal detail. Opening them was not much better, as the sparse, grey walls of her small room offered nothing but a reminder of everything that had happened since then.

Ahsoka had long come to terms with the fact that Maul himself was not the source of her trauma. He had just been another foe in her campaign through the Clone Wars, perhaps a bit stronger, but no different from any other darksider she fought. He was a stain on the tapestry of her past, like anything else from that time. It was what had come after that haunted her.

She couldn’t recall just how long she had cried after leaving the moon, seven years ago. She and Rex had taken any time not spent sleeping or navigating their little speeder, in silence, holding one another. The cycles had a habit of flowing into one another. Every so often she would feel another pang through the force as yet more Jedi were found and cut down. First came the calculating denial, the cold fear, then her unfamiliar and _unrelenting_ anger. 

Rex would simply hold her as she shook, wracked with tremors. He would stand steady even as her fists hit his unarmored chest, even as the tears streamed down both of their faces and mingled in the fabric of their clothes. How she longed for him in this moment, once again speeding through hyperspace, uncertain of the future she was organizing.

When they split up, months after the fledgling Empire dug its claws in deep, it was mutually understood. Rex wanted to search for his brothers, anyone else who might be saved from their _new_ old master, and had insisted that Ahsoka would be in more danger at his side. She had begrudgingly agreed, knowing it meant the universe to him to find his kin, and assuring him they would meet again. That didn’t make parting any easier, but Ahsoka trusted him more than anyone else.

Here she was, crossing the galaxy yet again. It would be only two cycles’ time before they reached the Hosnian system, and another before she met up with Maul directly. She knew Rex wouldn’t approve of the path she was on.

Ahsoka laid down to rest.

### Hosnian Prime, Aboard the _First Light_

“I’m no stranger to working with you bounty hunters, though I do appreciate _seeing_ the face of the person I’m going to be employing.”

Vos’ contempt permeated the air of his office. He had not thought - or cared - to tell her, but it seemed Maul had given her the alibi of being a bounty hunter. Ever secretive, even among his agents. Had it been anyone else, she would have thanked him for taking her privacy into consideration. 

“You’re not the one I’m here to speak to.” She kept her tone neutral, echoing Saw’s words three days prior. Vos gave her a withering look, but relented after a moment, standing from his couch with a flourish.

As he brushed past her, he trailed a clawed touch to her right lek and whispered beside her montral, “Saw is playing with fire, _Togruta._ My benefactor may be interested in your propositions, but _I_ don’t have such faith.” 

Her head whipped around, snarling. The tip of her lek twitched back in response to his touch. Vos walked out of the room without sparing a backward glance, and she was left alone in the office to wait. To get her mind off of her nerves, she looked about the room. The decor around her was muted, but ostentatious nonetheless. A variety of valuables stood on pedestals, stolen, if she had to guess. 

Ahsoka wandered to the window with a huff of indignation. It was dusk and the sky had an even pink overcast. The city lights added a golden glow through the fog. Though the architecture was far different, she couldn’t help but be reminded of the view from the council room of the Jedi Temple. She tried to feel happy at the memory of her former home, but could conjure only sadness. Ahsoka instead returned to the present, ruminating on the once-Sith she was about to deal with. She had steeled herself that morning for the confrontation with Maul, and found she was not nearly as apprehensive as she first felt within the Partisan camp. Maul was a crime lord, had been for nearly a decade now; and thanks to that, he was predictable.

The hiss of the door opening was gentle, but the footsteps following it were far less. They were the same metallic thuds she had heard through the holoprojector - he wore no boots to mask the noise. Ahsoka expected a sardonic comment that never came. Instead, she heard him pause momentarily before taking a seat. The soft hiss of hydraulics and silken fabric mingled as he settled in.

She didn’t turn to look at him.

“What the hell did you tell that rat of yours?”

“You are a bounty hunter, from Saw Gererra’s ranks, who works outside of the Guild’s system. Please try to play along.”

Ahsoka gave a noncommittal noise in response, finally turning and squinting down at his position on the central couch. He was an image of tranquility and confidence, leaning both arms against the back of the lounge, robotic legs crossed loosely. She noted that he carried no saber. ‘ _Good_ ,’ she thought. They had taken hers the moment she stepped on board. His loose vest folded out on itself, and the deep scarlet of his skin looked brighter, _healthier_ than she had remembered. His eyes bored holes through her.

“A mask?” He quirked a tattooed brow at her ensemble. 

“It’s what a bounty hunter would wear.” 

“You need not wear it in my presence, Lady Tano.” He spread his palms out, “To Vos you are an employee. To me... you are a warrior.”

After her run in with the Sixth Brother on Raada she had fashioned the loose mask to obscure her distinguishing features. It may have been an unnecessary precaution overall, but it had come in handy over the years. Plus, it had done its part to annoy both Vos and now Maul, so that had to be worth something. Part of her was loath to remove it in front of him, just on principle, though she knew there was no real reason to hide now. Ahsoka stepped toward the couch opposite Maul, reaching up to withdraw the fabric from her chin and slide the strap from her head as she walked. She never once took her eyes off of him. His hands flexed slightly with her movement.

The mask landed in a flutter on the couch while she took her seat, leaning both elbows on her knees and tilting her chin slightly at him. He motioned to a plate of cured meats and fruit between them, a small courtesy Vos had allowed. She did not move.

They sat like that for a long moment, silent acknowledgement of their history passing between them. Ahsoka broke the silence first. “We can offer a 10% advance tax on all-”

“30.”

“15.”

Maul laughed, genuine and loud - it was a noise she didn’t even think he knew _how_ to make. His mottled teeth gave a short click as he grimaced back at her, “ _I_ do not give a _damn_ about the credits Lady Tano. But I must appease my subordinates somehow, hmm? If not with credits, then how?”

Ahsoka gave a frustrated sigh and rubbed at her forehead. “To be frank Maul, you were not the one I expected to be heading this gang. Had I known I was going to be dealing with one as obstinate as you, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” She leaned into the back rest and crossed her arms over her chest. “So, what is it you _do_ give a damn about?”

“Information.”

“If you actually think I’m going to sell out my compatriots, I’ll take my leave right now.”

“Not your rebellion, no. Information on the Empire. I have my own moles, but the more the merrier. Certainly you have your own connections too?”

Ahsoka stared at him, calculating. In the few years since Mandalore, new tension lines had formed across his brow. He was calm at the moment, his Force signature shielded but smug, though his aura did nothing to hide the physical tolls he had taken through the years. She stood, grabbing one of the morsels from the table between them and walking back to her place at the window. It was fully night in the city now, and the fog that once covered it had cleared enough for her to look up at the sky. The stars were invisible with the light pollution as it was.

“You’re not good at bargaining, you know.” His voice slid over to her like silk. The tell-tale sound of his cybernetics booted up once more, and he stood to join her at the sill. His robes, loose and flowing in a way she had not seen him wear before, brushed the side of her arm. It all felt too familiar to her, the way he stood facing out, with his hands loosely clasped at his lower back. “Though, neither am I, truly.”

She took a small bite from the cured meat she held, noting with a bit of satisfaction how he twinged. It was low of her to goad about his cybernetics, she knew, but this was his game. She would play along, just as he requested.

“Fine.” Ahsoka spoke between bites. Maul’s Force immediately became a live wire. He didn’t dare cut in, knowing she had more to say. She felt more of that deep, odd vindication at the notion that she had him hanging on her every word and languished in it. “But it will be your bounty hunter who delivers the information.”

Maul was looking at her pointedly. Their eyes stood nearly level now - which she had to admit, boosted that budding ego even more. After a moment he smiled in his own sneering way, straightening his back and turning to face her fully.

“For a fifteen percent advance on my equipment, and the secrets of the Empire... my Lady,” He offered his hand, “I will help you.”

Ahsoka looked down at his offered palm, another wave of recognition rolling through her. The stakes were not quite so drastic, the terms were more or less her own this time, but still she felt the same apprehension. She noted that the gloves he wore now were a different cut - plain, not tactical, and free of grime and dust. She grasped his hand in hers, pristine leather chafing against her own worn armorweave. The gloves she had worn on Mandalore.

She made a mental note to get a new pair.


	2. Mutuality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the love on chapter 1! I hope I can continue to live up to your expectations... while writing comes fairly naturally to me, I do have dyslexia so it can be rough putting myself out there like this, the encouragement is very kind <3
> 
> This chapter is a lot of dialogue. Where the first chapter set up the general premise, and some of Ahsoka's past, this one meant to set up /both/ of our protagonists' respective mindsets at the whole ordeal. Hopefully that conveys well.
> 
> I'm still getting used to AO3's weird formatting system, sorry if things look odd
> 
> cheers~

#### 12 BBY - 6th standard month

### Deep Space, Outer Rim

Even through the small holoprojector, she wanted to punch the man in front of her. “Would you deny me my curiosity, Lady Tano?”

“I don’t recall anything about having to divulge my locations to you as part of our deal. Imperial information only, remember?”

“We really should have put that in writing. Ahh, I was being too kind to you Tano, back in that office.” Maul laid his hands out, palms facing up on the stone slab of his desk, feigning anguish. Dramatic as ever. “Is it too much to ask who my lovely patrons are?”

She couldn’t help laughing at his display. Whatever had him in a good mood was making her job vastly more annoying than usual. “What, I’m not enough for ya?”

“No, but I will admit you are more fun to talk to than most of my usual benefactors!” That old, hauty look was back. “They’re always groveling, telling me what they think I want to hear, unwilling to participate in banter like normal, Force-damned peop-”

“Hmm, now that’s an idea. Goodbye, Maul.” She spoke over him and cut the communication before he could finish. The projector froze on a frame of his last indignant rebuttal before clicking off entirely. R5 beeped something rude from its place in the corner of the cockpit. Ahsoka reprimanded the droid by lightly tapping it with her foot, a smile on her face. She leaned back as much as was possible in the small space, stretching out a tight muscle in her back.

Their setup had worked out surprisingly well over the last four months. Only once had the two of them come close to physical blows. Entirely on accident at that. For her first pickup, Ahsoka went to Dathomir to grab the cargo personally. Seeing him in the flesh for the second time that month had made her itch to put her sabers in her hand. The whole hand-off was a jumpy ordeal, and when one of his Nighbrother guards set a crate down _just_ a little too loud, she reacted on instinct.

He, of course, had his saber out the second she reached for her hips. The moment was still vivid in her mind - their eyes locked, breathing heavy, bodies tense. There had been about ten feet between them, and for that split second the dusty pavilion turned into a throne room, acrid with smoke and littered with broken glass. Neither of them ignited their weapons, and he had been the first to put his away.

Yes, their arrangement was good, all things considered. Even if it meant she had to listen to him enjoy the sound of his own voice.

She stretched again before standing to walk to the back of the cockpit. After a brief glance at the cargo and crew in the back of the freighter, she reached down to return the portable projector to her pack and pull out an audio recorder. It would be another week or so before she returned to base and would be able to send anything on the encrypted line, but Ahsoka found that pre-recording her messages to Rex was the best way to pass time in hyperspace. 

He had stopped responding a few years ago; it would have worried her had it been anyone else. Their bond was familiar enough to her that Ahsoka was certain she would feel it through the Force if something were to happen to him. At her gentle probes through the web of the Force, she could sense him, ever so slightly. It was enough to keep her hopeful. Her messages were never very substantial, and from the very beginning they had agreed to use personal code names for one another. If their chatter were to end up on the wrong frequencies, it would have little impact. Ahsoka flicked on the little recorder as she wandered back into the pilot seat, staring intently into the blue hyperspace around her.

“Hey Alpha, it’s been a while since I recorded one of these. A long while. I’m still out in the fields every day, watching those old stars pass by faster and faster. Found someone recently, the old asshole from… that last day. You know the one. 

“That’s another bullet on the list of “things you were right about.” Hah… We shouldn’t have used that distraction. I know we agreed a long time ago that we wouldn’t use the line to talk about this, but it’s getting harder to push it to the side. Especially since you’ve gone dark. Alpha… would it have been any different with M- the distraction… dead? The ship might not have crashed but we might have been overrun. I- I still think about them. All of them. Every last one.

“... And I think you wouldn’t be happy with me if you knew what I’m up to this time. In a lot of ways it’s just like that distraction, but maybe I can use it to my advantage this time. Maybe I can ride through the chaos… force it to move as I want this time, and get something good out of it all in the end.

“Think of me when you look at the stars Alpha. Morai out.”

### Ryloth, Eastern Base

Of her limited knowledge of the Ryloth dialect, Ahsoka quickly gathered that whatever was going on in the room behind her was _not_ good. It was also something she was _not_ planning on interfering in. Familial disputes were not her strong suit.

She was here for the weapons drop, as Cham Syndulla had requested. It felt like ages since she had last laid foot on Ryloth. Being here was bittersweet to her. Like her, Cham had been fighting since the Clone Wars - to free his planet and people from one enemy after another. He was keeping her waiting now, but she allowed some amount of understanding at the hold up.

It was another ten minutes before the argument in the room reached a head. Many Twi’leks had wandered by, only to rush away down the hall when they heard what was happening behind the door. Ahsoka remained steadfast leaning against the wall, even as the door shot open and a young Twi’lek stormed out, angry tears streaming down her face. She watched the young woman go, and the rickety C1 astromech that followed, before turning into the room to see how Syndulla senior fared.

“I apologize, miss Tano. My daughter is headstrong… persistent.” Cham was turned away from her as he spoke. His shoulders were tense.

“War does that to a young woman.” Ahsoka spoke quietly, not unkind, though she let an edge cut through her voice. Cham looked up at her, eyes bloodshot and tired. He nodded, almost sagely.

“I take it the munitions have already been unloaded?”

“Yes.”

“And your payment?”

Ahsoka remained quiet. She had not yet received the 50 thousand promised, expecting Syndulla would be the one to hand it over. He let out a sigh of understanding and dragged a hand down his face. 

“Right, thank you Miss Tano.” He stepped over to a small safe at the back of the room, hidden behind a crate of, well, nothing. The label on the side implied food - ration bars specifically. Cham kicked it away faintly, and the clatter of the hollow plasticine box made Ahsoka’s lekku twitch. While Cham leaned down to open the safe, Ahsoka thought of the Twi’leks who had assisted with her shipment at the dock. They were young, but not hearty by any account. The more she ruminated, the more her mind was set. She was sick of playing the bounty hunter anyway.

“You need food.” The statement received a faded look from Cham, as he pushed his hand out with the credit chips and dropped them in her hand. Five total. She met his eyes and returned three. “And weapons. Now you can have both.”

“Tano I-”

“Please.” She curled his hand around the chips. He nodded, looking as if he had aged three more decades in that moment alone.

“I know who supplies these weapons you offer, Gererra has told me as much.” Cham weighed the credits in his hand for a moment before giving a single one back to her, and keeping the final 20 thousand, “Assuming he has told me only the truth, I know you will not tell them we didn’t pay fully, either.”

“Crimson Dawn won’t be able to trace their missing credits back to you, Syndulla. You have my word.”

He nodded again, lost in thought. “My daughter wishes to leave this place, you know? She wishes to join your cause. If she were to abandon us... ” Ahsoka remained still as he trailed off, giving him another moment to open up. “It may be good if you talk to her. At least then I know her path may diverge somewhere worth traveling.”

“I will talk to her before I go.” Pocketing the remaining credits, Ahsoka took one last look at Cham Syndulla and shook his hand. She recognised a particular brand of resolve in the creases of his battle-worn face. Perhaps one day he would join their greater cause. For now though, his people needed him.

### Ryloth, Low Orbit

Ahsoka was stalling. She knew she was, yet she sat there still, gazing at the holoprojector with a sideways glance. Her foot made a tattoo of beats on the floor of the cockpit as she jittered. She breathed deep while her astromech worked at getting the hyperdrive up and running.

Her nerves were not out of fear per se - as if she would ever let herself be close to fearful of Maul - but rather, out of a reexamination of her choices up until now. Thoughts of the Martez sisters came to her with a wave of hypocrisy and regret. Things seemed so simple then. The spice trade hurt people, so it was bad. Her morals were fairly cut and dry - light versus dark, good versus evil; they were the principles her life had been moulded around for 17 long years, until… well, until those principles died alongside everything else she ever knew.

What she was doing now was different though, wasn’t it? She had spent many a night over the last few months lost in the same roiling thoughts folding over themselves in her mind. The weapons she delivered would kill just as many as they saved - and the ones they would save just happened to have the same moral compass as her. Maul’s words continued to play through her head.

_Rationalize it however you will my Lady._

R5 kicked the hyperdrive into action, and she booted up the holoprojector.

“My favorite _bounty hunter_ comes calling.” Maul wasn’t looking at the projector. Instead he was intently focused on a datapad in his hand. His jaw rested on the other, one finger pressing into his temple as if trying to jump start his thoughts. He had no gloves on for once. Ahsoka couldn’t recall if she had ever seen him so lamely businesslike.

She raised a brow in amusement, “Is now a bad time?”

He gave a noncommittal grunt and put down the datapad, rubbing the bridge of his nose slightly. “No, just late.”

Ahsoka was thrown off guard. Maul was quiet, but not in his usual, sinister way. He looked at her with a distinct fatigue that she couldn’t quite pin down. She almost sympathized with him. Almost. “If you’re in the middle of something I can call later, I’ll be in hyperspace for a long time anyway…”

“I would much rather have you as a distraction than these ledgers.” He intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms straight above his head, making his shoulders audibly pop in the process. Ahsoka shuffled in her seat a little. The Maul she knew was brash and self-centered, and the Zabrak in front of her seemed downright domestic.

She hummed a short note while thinking. “Never imagined I’d catch you in the middle of office work.”

“Normally I would give the duty to Vos or his lieutenant. Some things require more tact, however.” The slack skin around his eyes wrinkled as he put on a tired smile that she thought was a trick of the hologram. He massaged the horns at his temples. “How much was this last shipment for again…?” 

This wasn't going to work. “30 thousand.”

Maul actually looked at his datapad for a moment before realization dawned on his face. Sighing in frustration, he let it fall back onto the table with a clack.

“As I have said, the credits do not matter to me, Lady Tano,” His tone immediately shifted to a growl of such a low octave that the com nearly went to static, “But they matter to my people. I’ll let you in on a secret, these ties I keep are tenuous. Many only follow me out of fear. Fear of what I may do to them, should they not. follow. my. rules.”

She scoffed, knowing she was in the deep end by her own making, but playing it off anyway. “Don’t you know by now that you don’t intimidate m-”

“Don’t _you_ know by now, the difference between when I speak out of _intimidation_ and when I speak out of _admiration_? Whatever this,” he waved a hand around, as if the conversation were a miasma in the air, “little stunt you’re trying to pull is - it’s downright stupid, and below both of our levels of inteligence. 

“Still, the fact that you, Lady Tano, are the only person _willing_ to make such a move? What choice do I have but to admire it? We have a habit, Tano, of playing a game of power with one another. On that Star Destroyer, you played it too. And you played it _well._ ”

For the second time tonight, he was surprising her. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in the pilot seat. “I left you for dead Maul. I would have thought you still hated me for that night. Fully expected it, actually.”

“I do, my Lady, I do. I harbor hate for many things; however, the understandings we share take precedent. You hate the Emperor for everything he has taken from you, all the people he has ripped from your arms. You are also among the scant few who have bested me at combat. That’s worth something.”

“You weren’t trying to kill me on Mandalore though.”

“No.”

Ahsoka remained silent, staring just to the left of his projection. Against her will, she felt her heartbeat pick up pace. The old voice she kept so well locked up started to crawl back into the forefront of her mind. ‘I wasn’t good enough. I took too long. If I had kept up my training, stayed with the Je-’

“But neither were you.” 

The voice stopped. “What…?”

“If you had come to Mandalore of your own volition, without those clones… I have no doubt you would have been fighting to kill. It was another instance of the _Jedi_ holding you back from what your true potential was, what it still is.” She met his eyes. His pupils were blown wide. “Would it scare you to know that I would like to spar with you again someday Lady Tano? The number of good swordsmen out there have been decimated… it would do us both well to practice again.”

“You want me to fight you… as if I were trying to kill you.” She spoke slowly, sarcastically - more as a statement than a question.

His right hand moved to his chest, over his twin hearts. “Yes and I would do you the same honor.”

“That’s a fucked up way to think.”

Maul laughed that same genuine, hearty laugh that had rung through her mind ever since they cut the deal on Hosnian Prime. “What, you don’t see the _fun_ in some high-stake competition? Clearly you have not interacted much with the Dathomiri.” He leaned forward, steepling his hands in front of his sneering mouth. “Still, I will respect your apprehension and hold down my compulsion for battle.”

“Apprehension?” She leaned forward, mirroring his snarl. “Careful Maul or you might just lose those legs of yours again.”

“That’s more like it, Tano.” His sneer loosened up into his normal smug smile. This was the man she was familiar with, though it threw her off to even think of him as such. She was comfortable in this realm of mutual ribbing. It was ironic that when he was more or less threatening her life she felt her walls go down.

“As for the payment…” Maul looked off into the middle distance, scratching his chin in thought. “Well, I’m sure Syndulla will find a way to pay up eventually.” 

Just like that the walls were back up, and her blood turned to ice.

“I’m inclined to go easy on him. That stunt on Ryloth a few years back nearly wiped out the Emperor himself-”

“ _Maul_.”

His gaze shifted back to her, she stood from her chair and was now mere inches away from his face on the holoprojector. The quality wasn’t great this far into hyperspace, and his smug expression hid it well, but she could sense the undeniable twinge of alarm he felt at her tone of voice.

“We specifically arranged it so that these coms couldn’t be traced, for both of our interests.” She seethed at him, hands gripping the pilot’s console so hard that one of her nails began to bend. “Are you telling me you _rigged_ mine to be trackable?”

“Secrets, my Lady, go both ways.” Maul’s face still wore the smug mask, but his eyes betrayed a deep unease, and something else. Anticipation, as if he wanted this anger to descend upon him. The Force stormed around her. Oh how Ahsoka wanted to strangle him right there. Suddenly the thought of returning blows with him once again was _much_ more appealing.

“Regardless of our past conversations, or my actions here, I really _don’t_ care where you are or who you help.” Maul stood from his seat as well, his own signature in the Force inching forward to tentatively quell hers, “However, you must understand this; if you expect this to work, you would do right to trust me a bit more.” 

“Trust you? You say this while you’re in the middle of extorting information from my com system! After directly going back on your word, and after telling me you’d like to fight to the death no less!” 

“I would like to fight _as if_ it were to the death, there is a difference.” He rolled his eyes while he spoke. She despised it when he did that. “The panel at the lower left of the holoprojector. Open it.” 

“What?” 

He began to rattle off some numbers and she hastily flipped the small panel open and typed them in, practically smashing the buttons in anger. At the end of the series the projection changed from Maul’s face to a chart. On it was a pair of columns - one housed a list, the second housed an option to ‘track.’ The list was one bullet long, consisting of a short line of coordinates, two timestamps - local and standard - and the common name of the planet, ‘Ryloth.’

Maul’s voice came through, even without his image in front of her. “That list includes which of your many communications have been tracked.” The timestamp beside Ryloth matched with the time she had initiated their current call. This was the first and only time he had tracked her. “You will see that you can trace this sister com I possess, just as easily. Go ahead.” 

She was hesitant to follow any instruction from him out of pure spite, but when she ran the tracking command a second bullet was added to the list. Coordinates for Nar Shaddaa came up, with a local time of 0242. She closed out the tab and his face returned.

“Trust me. I do not plan on tracking you again. From here on, the list will never change.” To his credit, Maul certainly looked sincere. The last time she had seen this expression paint his face was on Mandalore.

“This little game you insist on playing is excessive.” Her hands still gripped the console just a little too tight.

“Isn’t everything lately?” 

“It’s certainly very on brand for _you_.” 

“Lady Tano I _need_ to have confidence in you. Confidence that what you are doing is in my best interests as well. You are the only person alive who I truly think would _die_ before giving anything up to Lord Sidious, but I had to make sure. Surely you understand that.”

She remained silent for a moment, centering herself and releasing her grip slowly. For once, he stayed quiet long enough for her to gather her thoughts. She leaned in close once more, her voice like a knife. “If you want my trust, you will not go back on your word. You will openly communicate with me. No more of the mind games you like to set up. Threaten me all you like, but the moment you bring others into it you better be prepared to lose it all.

“We agreed to work together, Maul. You provide resources, I provide money and intel. This is not the place for you to poke and prod to try and gain a leg up on me as if I were competition. You said you admire me? Well fucking act like it.”

The projector took a moment to recalibrate to their harsh breathing, static coming through as they stared one another down. Maul’s eye twitched slightly. The man was infuriating. She had to admit though, it was nice to be mad about something tangible again.

“What you said was true, Maul. I do understand that I’m the only person you can trust.” She tilted her chin up slightly. “Which means you understand that much is the same on my end. You would _die_ before giving me up to Sidious, just on the principle of who he is. I don’t take that lightly, but it is just one step on the path to me trusting you. As we stand now, your secrets are safe with me, and mine should stay safe with you.”

Maul nodded, “Agreed.”

“Good.” Ahsoka sat again, though energy still coursed through her. She leaned back in the chair, hands poised gingerly on the armrests. It was another moment before Maul followed suit, cybernetics hissing as he returned to his own seat. The storm she crafted in the Force was on its way out, though the thunder still rang through her mind. What was left was a windswept ache somewhere deep inside her.

“Keep the credits.”

“Is that some kind of apology?”

He ignored her. “Check that list any time you want to test our _trust_. I expect there will be no more need for such a feature any more though, hmm?”

The ache unsettled her. She resented how much she wanted to return to their easy banter. “I could get a lot of money for selling this tracker to the Empire.”

Maul grinned. “And I, mine. But we won’t do that. I don’t need to make up that 50 thousand quite so bad.”

She laughed in spite of herself, in spite of the anger that had ebbed in and flowed out within the last minute. It was all she could do to deal with this nuisance of a man. “No, we won’t.”

He smiled, tired lines returning once again. “Before I leave you… Your previous intel was good. These Inquisitors get more intriguing the more I learn about them. Let me know if you run into any more. I will do the same for you.” She nodded, meeting his eyes. “Get some rest, the next pick up will be waiting for you on Taris in a week’s time. Goodnight, Ahsoka Tano.”


	3. An Unsettling Appeal to the Untamed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gore and violence tag is earned in this chapter. Some chatter of a red light district; drugs, prostitution, and the like, though it is very minimal. The violence is the main thing.
> 
> Also fuck the em dash, all my homies hate the em dash. Aka: I know I should be using longer/muli hyphens with how I write, I just don’t want to. I’m a poet by nature and I will make grammar my bitch. Consider it my way of getting back at AO3 for not letting me easily paragraph-indent without jumping through hoops.

#### 12 BBY - 10th standard month

### Chandrila, Hanna City

“Yes, and _I_ am telling _you_ , Ahsoka, that traveling to that hovel of a moon alone is not worth whatever prize you may bring back for us!” Mon Mothma was never mad, not outright. She always covered her emotion with a tone of sadness that was unique to her. There were many times that Ahsoka had been in the crosshair of that tone, and this was no different. She was familiar enough to know that Mothma was _seething._

“Though I do not agree with it all, your covert arm dealings have amassed more supplies than I could have ever hoped for the Alliance. All those ships, the proton weapons, Ahsoka it will do us no good to have you dead in a ditch on Nar Shaddaa, or worse, when these are the kinds of tools you provide for us.”

Ahsoka was thoroughly regretting so much as mentioning her next move to the Senator. She had come to Chandrila to pick up the credits to be transferred to Maul, not to be chastised like a youngling.

“Mon Mothma,” She spoke curtly, already wanting to be done with the planet and back in the hyperlanes. “I have been at war since I was 14 years old, I lived on my own in the deepest underbelly of Coruscant, and now I jump from hideout to hideout in order to keep all of our actions secret. Your side of the Alliance has to be public by nature of being a Senator, but I know how to stay out of sight, and out of trouble.”

With a sigh, she handed Ahsoka the credit transfer card. “What am I to tell Bail if you do not return?” Mothma relented to her easily, but sounded far from thrilled about the prospect of it all. She knew that in the end, she had no sway over Ahsoka’s actions.

“Tell him to carry on.” Ahsoka pocketed the card and moved to leave. “If you ask Saw he’ll probably even continue the supply lines I’ve opened, the crew he leant me is trustworthy.” 

“Stay safe, Fulcrum.” Mothma’s words followed her down the hall as she returned to the senatorial docking platform. The usher Mothma had tasked to chaperone Ahsoka was waiting with the ship, still primed for takeoff. It was a brief flight to the public bays, where her x-wing and the Freighter were docked.

Her usher remained silent as the city rushed past them. The fabric of Ahsoka’s mask fluttered rapidly around her chin as she watched gleaming white penthouses turn to durasteel offices, then deteriorating concrete apartment complexes. The disparity between the bureaucratic and pedestrian districts - between Mothma and herself - struck a new chord in her every time she came to Chandrila. It was like any other planet in the inner rim, and Ahsoka would be remiss to think it was the fault of the Empire alone that these people lived in such inequity. The usher did not so much as look at her as he dropped her off at the bay.

A handful of her Partisan crew members looked up and waved from their game of sabacc as she walked into the hangar they rented out. She returned the gesture before walking to the far wall to pull their pay and the rental fee out of a credit teller machine. Ahsoka briefed the freighter captain on her next move as she handed over the credits, agreeing to meet the Umbaran captain and her crew back at Gererra’s small base on Jedah in a week’s time with their next assignment. She nodded, bidding Ahsoka farewell.

After the typical scan for tracking devices on her ship by R5, Ahsoka was off. The flight out of the atmosphere was uneventful, but once the calming ultramarine waves of hyperspace engulfed her, she let out a breath she didn’t know was trapped. While back in the war she may have taken such a risky mission out of a desire to prove herself to Anakin and Obi-wan; now, she was taking action purely to satiate her own piqued curiosity. 

The call had come from Maul in the early hours of the morning prior. Her sleep was fitful anyway, so she had begrudgingly answered him. “What is it Maul? Is this payback for that 2am call?”

“Lady Tano, I apologize for the time, but there is a powerful enemy here on Nar Shaddaa. I need your assistance to apprehend him.”

She had been too tired to notice his urgent tone at the time. “If it’s Nar Shaddaa, there are powerful beings everywhere.” Ahsoka barely got out her sluggish response before a rolling crash cut through the com and jolted her properly awake. Maul had looked past the holoprojector in his hand at something invisible to her, his eyes ablaze.

“Lady Tano, this conversation must be cut short but just know that this could be a culmination of our combined intel on the Empire. Time is of the essence, come quickly and we may retain the upper hand.”

He cut the transmission there, and had left Ahsoka to wonder in the dark.

### Nar Shaddaa, Crimson Dawn’s Cloister

It had been a mere three hours between her landing on Nar Shaddaa to the current moment. The only coordinates she had to go off of were from their conversation of secrets and trust four months back. It felt fitting, if not mildly ironic, that a moment so filled with anger in her mind was benefiting her now. 

The coordinates led her directly to Crimson Dawn’s block of the city, specifically an ostentatious bar and dancer’s den. She had planned to sneak into the basement of the establishment, but the bouncer in the front called out her bounty hunter alias as she walked past and let her through the main doors instead. The women of the night were beautiful, and the patrons lively - far from what she would have expected of anything even tangentially related to Maul, though that was the point of his control. To remain unsuspected, was to remain alive.

“You said I needed to be here in person, that this target was more than you could handle on your own, but would be a point of interest to me.” Ahsoka outlined her thoughts carefully, more for her own sake than his. She now stood at the edge of his desk - the heavy stone slab she had seen so often in his holoprojections, it felt warmer than she would have guessed - with her forearms balanced upon it. She leaned forward, purposefully crowding him to see whatever was on his datapad. Nothing of note apparently, from her quick glimpse of the device. “Care to actually tell me what’s going on now or are you going to stay cryptic?”

He powered the datapad off and leaned away slightly. ”When you hear why I brought you here, you will know why I had to keep it to the most scant details until we met face to face. Lady Tano, under any other circumstance… I would never break that tenuous trust you have in me.” A raucous applause from the bar above rolled through the thick ceiling as Maul spoke. His voice was soft and full of promise. In truth, he had been wholly transparent with her since their argument, and she actually _had_ come to trust him in the subsequent months.

“Just explain it to me.” she rubbed a tension line on her forehead, willing away a forming headache and the strange wave of endearment she felt at his plight. It was that damned voice of his. “Succinctly, please.”

”There is an Inquisitor on this moon. He tracked a Force-sensitive Rodian here.”

She perked up immediately, ”A Jedi?”

“No, untrained from what I gathered. She was young, born and died on this planet.” He growled out the mention of her death, and something deep told Ahsoka that he was honestly mournful for the girl. “I sensed her some time ago, but during a bit of my own probing into the situation, I was witness to an outburst of Force energy. That was the explosion in my previous call. She broke some things, killed some people, and fatally harmed herself in the process of it all.” Maul stood from his desk; she followed him with her eyes as he paced to the back of the room, mechanical footsteps echoing through the small office. He grabbed a dark and indistinguishable article of clothing from a chest there. “The Inquisitor is following that lead, but does not know her fate.”

“So what’s your plan?”

“Her body still lies within her apartment in the Spice Sector, where she fled. The Inquisitor will have a hard time tracking her posthumous Force signature, but I know the location. We camp it out, and kill him.”

“Hmm…” She mulled over it for a moment, while Maul gathered yet more clothing, making two short piles. “Killing him may be our end goal, but this would also be a good chance to get more info of the Inquisitorius.”

“I never took you for the interrogative type.” He smirked at her over his shoulder. “A living Inquisitor is a dangerous weapon for the Emperor, Lady Tano. The faster he dies, the better.”

“I’ve taken risks for you these past few days Maul, I’ll take one more for myself this time, thanks.” She walked over to his position at the edge of the room, where he had amassed a pair of stealth gear - robes, hoods, masks, soft-soled shoes and the like. Beside the set she assumed to be his were a few small jars of cybernetic waxes and oils. His joints were not too obnoxiously loud usually, but it seemed Maul was leaving no room for error. “Let me question him a bit.”

“I am as hungry for intel as you, but I can’t promise anything, Ahsoka. You know how they fight. It may not be up to choice.” He straightened his back, cracking it lightly. They stood shoulder to shoulder as he offered her one of the identical sets of robes, with an added Togrutan face guard set on top. 

Ahsoka let out a huff of laughter, running her thumbs over the dark fabric of the montral-straps. “Better than my flimsy mask huh? It’s about time I upgraded.”

“This is simply more practical, and it will project that fragile face of yours.” Maul grinned, as she bared her teeth in a growl, though she knew it was all in good humor. “Besides, the robes will disguise our figures - should the Inquisitor slide through our grasp somehow, he will not know who we are. The idea is that our lightsabers will be the only identifying feature upon us. That much cannot be helped.” 

He began to unclip the Crimson Dawn emblem from his chest and motioned for her to change in the adjacent refresher room. She simply nodded in agreement and walked toward the other room, examining the clothes as she went. They were all armorweave, but of a thinner variety than what she was used to from her time in the Clone Wars. What she now held was a vastly higher end material. Generally, such fabric did nothing to stop lightsaber blades in the end, but it was _silent_ , and that was what they needed.

Maul called to her from the main room as she removed the armored guards from her hips and chest, and slipped the lean robe up to her shoulders. It was odd to hear his voice so neutral while still being projected enough to reach her. “I had these robes made some time ago. They were intended for Crimson Dawn’s assassins, but have gone unused since I brought the Sun and the Pykes back into the Syndicate.” Ahsoka only half listened to him while replacing her boots with the softer alternatives. “The mask was specifically designed for you though.”

“Stop preening maul, give your poor, overworked ego a rest for once.” That earned another rare laugh, one that she could hear even through the closed door. Ahsoka added a tally to her mental list.

Tightening the robe to fit snugly over her standard bodysuit one final time, she tucked her lightsabers into the wide belt at her ribs so they were invisible from the outside but easy to remove. Ahsoka took a fleeting glance at the mirror, barely recognizing herself in the dark layers. She stored her belongings under the sink, gripped the face guard, and returned to the main suite.

Maul was turned away from her - robe tied around his waist but not yet set upon his shoulders - while he situated his own mask. It was something of a wrap, covering all but his eyes and ending in a tight line of coils around his collarbones. It struck Ahsoka then, that she had never considered quite how _much_ of him was tattooed. Though physically he was now only half the man he had been, the lines on his back indicated to her that the markings had once plunged much farther along his body, likely covering most of his now lost skin. 

Having heard her return, he slipped into the upper portion of the robe and cinched it closed, turning his figure into a nebulous void of cloth. A memory came to her in that moment, of Obi-Wan’s stories about the former Sith. When he, his master, and young Anakin had all been tracked down by the Zabrak, Kenobi described Maul with a similar aura to the one he now wore. Maul may have planned to camp out their target location, but he was preparing as if it were an active hunt.

”Why did you want me to join you for this, really?” Ahsoka’s voice was muted. He turned to respond, but stopped and looked her up and down, a disgruntled look passing over his eyes. She hesitated, “What?”

“Nothing, you just look out of place in these robes.” Maul shook his head, lifting his hood. “Odd.”

“Yeah, no thanks to you.”

He shrugged, “You’re welcome.”

“Care to answer me now?”

He sighed, shoulders sagging, almost petulant. “It seemed something you would find gratifying, Lady Tano. And I - as much as I am loath to admit - am actually disadvantaged when wielding a single blade against an Inquisitor’s double.” The confession startled her. She hadn’t known his new saberstaff only housed a single blade, and idly wondered how many times she could have used that knowledge to her advantage in the past few months.

“With luck though, there will be at least two extra crystals to harvest tonight.” Maul continued, resolve returning to his voice. “I will have my pick of the crop. Come.” He motioned for her to follow him, so she finally situated the face guard to complete her ensemble. “We will exit through the back.” 

### Nar Shaddaa, Spice Sector 

Obi-Wan had been wrong about one thing with Maul so far. He actually _could_ shut up when he needed to.

It set Ahsoka on edge to leave the Rodian girl where she had died a few days prior. The smell of putrefying flesh hung heavy around the apartment, though they were spared slightly by the open window. Nar Shaddaa was by no means an aromatic moon, but even the stale, city air was a blessing at this point.

Their first move had been to confirm the apartment was clear, then to make it appear actively lived in. A lit lamp here, an active radio there - without the smell and tracks of blood along the floor it may have been more believable, but the set up would have to do. Maul and Ahsoka now laid in wait within the bedroom. It was a perfect midpoint between the only entrances and exits in the apartment - the main door and the window they had come in through. Neither spoke while they sat together in the small space beside the bedroom’s open doorway. Ahsoka gripped a small EMP bomb in one hand, intended to short out any communicators the Inquisitor might have on hand, leaving them to use their unaffected sabers alone. She would have to be particular about where and when she threw it, as Maul told her in no uncertain terms that she would be stuck fighting the Inquisitor alone if the pulse reached his prosthetics.

Five minutes earlier, Ahsoka and Maul had both felt the Inquisitor through the Force. Their own superior experience had kept their signatures undetected, but they knew now it would only be a matter of time before the foe turned up. A breeze wafted into the apartment and Ahsoka breathed deep as they were granted a bit of respite from the rancid odor. She and Maul were so close to one another that for a moment they breathed the same fresh air. Even through the fabric of her mask she could tell he smelled of copper and leather, and below that she detected hints of lye, cinnamon, laurel - all bright and clean. If it weren’t such a pleasant departure from the alternative, she would have reevaluated the fact that she was actually _smelling_ Maul.

It was only a minute more before Ahsoka felt the Inquisitor’s presence again, this time directly outside the apartment. As expected, he entered through the window much like they had. Unlike them though, the tall man was far from quiet. His plastoid armor plates ground audibly against one another, and his heavy footsteps could be heard over the din of the radio as he stepped into the middle of the room. She caught a glimpse of him through the open bedroom doorway as he stood over the dead Rodian, poking her body with his foot. The girl was bloated and bruised from hypostasis, so he took a minute to stare down at her, likely calculating her time of death. If Ahsoka had to guess by the helmet shape and size alone, he was a young Cerean, in his early 20s. The dull lamp light glinted off his round saber hilt, and she felt Maul shift imperceptibly behind her.

She waited for one heartbeat, two, then silently rolled the EMP to the other side of the room. It hit the Inquisitor's boot and detonated. The com on his wrist immediately started to crackle and spark as it short-circuited, and as he reached for his saber Ahsoka took the moment of confusion to block his exit back through the window. Maul hesitated only a moment longer to ensure the pulse had fully dissipated, before slinking over to guard the front door, saber already ignited.

They stood in the stalemate for a mere second before all hell broke loose. Maul was the first to move, slicing in an arc intended to distract the Cerean. While he blocked Maul’s strike, Ahsoka moved in at the opening - aiming for the thigh with one saber, and the shoulder with another. Before she could make contact, the Inquisitor ducked down and spun, switching his position with Maul’s and causing Ahsoka to halt her swing before hitting her ally. Stepping back slightly under Maul’s constant pressure, the Sith pupil steadied his back against the wall, using it as leverage to allow him to land a kick on Maul’s chest, effectively pushing the older man away. Ahsoka jumped to the side to avoid tumbling under Maul’s weight, leaving him to catch himself on a side table. The lamp they had turned on rattled at the motion and fell, shattering and dousing the three in a darkness broken only by the light of their sabers and the city outside.

Ahsoka noted that the EMP had also broken the door mechanism - which was still sputtering with sparks - fully locking the three of them in together with only one exit. While Maul composed himself, she reoriented herself between the Inquisitor and the open window. He activated the motor in his saber, starting up that flashy spinning motion she had seen once before. She had hoped the pulse would halt those motors as well; though, like the kyber crystals, whatever they were made of happened to be unaffected. ‘ _Something to remember for later_ ’ she thought cynically.

She stabbed forward with her left saber while flipping the right into reverse. The stabbing motion halted the spin, though the pressure of holding the motor back strained her shoulder painfully. With the blade stopped, Ahsoka brought her second saber up, swinging it up in an angle at the Cerean’s visor. The Inquisitor disengaged the locked half of his saber in order to jump out of the way of her hit, only to be met with Maul at his back. While he took over the fight, Ahsoka rolled her shoulder. A searing pain shot down her back at the motion, though nothing in her arm felt fractured. She breathed heavily for a moment and stepped around the two men before her, calculating as Maul forced the Inquisitor back toward the wall from before. He took an opening to smash the hilt of his blade into the Cerean’s helmet, breaking the front glass around his eyes, as well as the man’s nose. His head slammed back with the force of the blow, hitting a mirror on the wall and shattering it. He fell to his knees among the glass, though it was only a ruse to get a swing in at Maul’s legs. The Zabrak leapt back, landing in a congealed pool of Rodian blood, still slick after all these days due to its chemistry. He slid with a surprised growl and his saber clattered away into the dark. The moment Maul started to go down, Ahsoka rushed forward, but the Inquisitor had been faster to stand and now readied another blow to Maul’s cybernetics.

Maul, though disadvantaged with a single blade - and now entirely without it - was by no means incapacitated. While she blocked the Inquisitor’s downward swing at his metallic legs, Ahsoka noticed him grasp a large, dangerously curved chunk of the broken mirror. She held the Inquisitor in position for a moment longer, her shoulder on fire, while Maul lined up his angle. She leapt away as his arm swung up in a perfect arc, making contact with the side of the Inquisitor’s waist just below the ribs and slicing forward with such force that the shard pierced directly through his abdominal wall. A portion of what Ahsoka could only guess was his upper intestine slipped out through the wound as the man screamed in agony.

She stepped back farther, breathing through her open mouth as the Cerean’s blood mingled with the stale Rodian’s on the floor. Once Maul stood, he used the Force to return his saber to his hand. He reignited the blade and pointed it at the Inquisitor, who was now slumped on the floor, spasming while attempting to hold in his gut. 

Blood rushed through her montrals, filling her head with a cacophony of static. “Keep him down, I’ll look for some bacta in the ‘fresher to keep that from bleeding out too soon for me to question him.”

“Ahsoka-”

Her heart rate was too fast, though she couldn’t think straight enough to fix it. The Cerean’s convulsions began to slow. “You said you’d give me a chance to question him -”

“Ahsoka, he's killed himself.” Maul pulled the now motionless Inquisitor’s helmet off, revealing a pale green foam around his mouth. A poison capsule. “It seems he had a contingency in place…”

Ahsoka stared down at the lifeless body before her. Lit only by the ghastly white and red of both of their sabers, his pale skin looked like a full-body bruise. In the darkness, his blood appeared black. The Rodian girl’s body laid only a few feet away, in the same position.

“For once,” Maul’s growl came to her from a mile away, “I need you to listen to those old Jedi teachings. Control your panic.”

She looked at his saber, unseeing for a moment, still on edge. He must have recognized the look, as he immediately turned the weapon off. She let out a huff of air at the motion, and disengaged her own. They were bathed once more in darkness. Ahsoka shook her head, not entirely sure what came over her. This was not the first time she had killed someone, and it would not be the last. She had not even been the one to strike the Inquisitor down, yet she couldn’t get rid of the chill she felt.

Maul was cautious, allowing her a wide breadth. His eyes glowed in the darkness, the backs of them reflecting what little light streamed through the window. “I am… sorry we could not get more information…”

Ahsoka shook her head again, harder this time, as if trying to shake her thoughts free. “It’s not that. I just haven't fought like that in years. I…” 

She was cut off by a banging at the door, and someone shouting in a language neither of them knew. Maul cut in, clipped and quiet, “Here is not the place to have this conversation.” He grabbed the fallen Inquisitor’s saber, and neither of them spoke again as they took their leave through the window. Ahsoka ignored the pain in her arm as they scaled the building and returned to the market levels. Blood covered and battered as they were, they mingled in just fine with the rough night crowd. They walked shoulder to shoulder, following the flow of beings around them naturally.

When there was a reasonable amount of distance between them and the apartment, Maul spoke. “Your arm?”

“It’s fine, strained pretty bad but nothing feels fractured or broken.” She didn’t trust her fatigued voice to carry over the sounds of the spice market around them, but he seemed to hear her anyway.

“We will have one of the Crimson Dawn medics take a look.”

Ahsoka just nodded. They took a sharp turn down an alley once they passed a particularly raunchy spice den, and were met by the Crimson Dawn convoy that had brought them to the sector in the first place. Maul waved his hand to the pair of guards, who opened their unobtrusive shuttle and allowed them in. The guards took to the cockpit, leaving them alone in the back.

Once the ship was properly in the skylanes Ahsoka leaned back against the hull tenderly. She removed her hood and face guard and let her eyes slip closed, if only for a moment. Focusing on breathing, she was finally able to center herself just as she had learned all those years ago. She felt Maul’s eyes land on her once or twice while she meditated, but opted to ignore him while her heartbeat returned to a normal drum. 

When she finally reopened her eyes Maul was sitting across from her, mask also removed. He was looking down at his own outstretched hand. Two kyber crystals laid in his palm and the saber casing sat beside him, carefully split into its components. He looked calm, even happy perhaps, in that moment. The seemingly permanent creases at the edge of his mouth were ironed out by a pensive smile on his lips as he stared down at the little shards. It was an expression she had not expected to see on his face, but it was not unwelcome. He kept one of the crystals and set the other aside, his mind made up between them. Their eyes met, and she was struck by his next words.

“Thank you, Ahsoka. It has been… long, since my last hunt with a companion at my side.” 

His phrasing made her lekku twitch. There was a time where such a statement would have unsettled her, but with the thought of a mutual enemy lying prone by their hands, she couldn’t help but relish the moment of camaraderie. It was all more gory than she remembered from the war. Maul was harsh where Anakin had been caring. He was passionate, where Obi-wan had been composed. It was different, but good company was hard to come by these days. She nodded, throat constricting in an unusual way.

“I like the white sabers. They suit you more than the blue ever did.” She felt tender at the thought of what she had come from, and where she was now. When she responded, it was sincere.

“Thank you, Maul.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note! The next update will take a little longer to get up due to some personal stuff, but it will probably be shorter too.  
> It's going to be somewhat quaint in comparison to this one. Dathomir will play a larger role from here on out, I love anthropology so expect some headcanons and stuff. :)
> 
> Cheers!


	4. Heightening of the Senses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of head-cannoning going on in this one, specifically with post-comic/pre-rebels Dathomir
> 
> -Locations are mashed up from Legends locations on Dathomir  
> -When/why Maul got his tats is debated afaik in canon still? so theres a minor reference to that.  
> -Since the Nightsisters are no longer the controlling force I like to think there would be a handful of young lady zabrak milling about with the Brothers, and they would still be referred to as “Nightbrothers” just from a linguistic standpoint. I could also get into how I imagine their culture views varying genders overall but this isn’t the place for it. Bare with me pls lol. u_u  
> -The good ol' nasty Maul teeth debate gets a backstory here.

#### 11 BBY - 3rd standard month

### Deep Space, Outer Rim

“Evening, Maul.”

“Good evening my Lady.” For once, their local times aligned properly during a call. “For what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Just a head’s up for you; I’ll be delivering the next payment directly.” Ahsoka fiddled a bit with her controls - she was not yet in hyperspace, and had found a secluded spot away from the hyperlanes to send and receive calls. She was coming from Sullust, and had just closed out a call from Bail, warning her that all of their credit lines were compromised - all payments would have to be liquid for the foreseeable future. While Ahsoka trusted Organa, she was mentally preparing to listen to Maul go on about how inconvenient this would be. “Where should I meet you?”

He was nothing if not predictable. “Oh? This will throw a wrench in Crimson Dawn’s payroll system, we have so many moving parts to deal with, and I certainly don’t have time to break down all those large chips into reasonable salaries. What’s the occasion…?” To his credit though, Maul sounded genuinely curious, and looked the part as well. When she looked up at his projection he had a hand by his chin, idly twisting a pen around. She didn’t know if it was a distant star shining through the hologram, or if his eyes actually glinted with interest.

“What do you think? I work with high profile people on all sides and credits get audited all the time. You’re on Dathomir?” Ahsoka said it like a question, though it was more or less a statement of fact. She looked away from his hologram and started keying in the hyperlane coordinates without acknowledging his growling.

“Awfully presumptuous Tano-”

“I’ve seen that pen on your desk, in your village. You have a habit of playing with it like that. Am I wrong?” She stopped just short of the last input, finger hovering over the button as she tossed him a smirk. 

He grinned right back with a light huff of laughter, “Call again once you’re underway Tano, it has been quiet around here while the Nightbrothers prepare for their hunt. The conversation would be… appreciated.”

“Sound’s good, Maul.” They both cut out as soon as the hyperdrive went online. Maul’s face remained frozen on the projection for a moment, glitched somewhat by the sudden communication interference. As her ship was pulled into the blue, she allowed herself a moment to get lost in the sharp contours of his face. Her chances of studying his tattoos in the past year were few and far between; but she took times like this, where the remnants of their communication floated unseeing before her, to catalogue the angles that were uniquely Maul. More and more she had become privy to his quiet side, and she delighted in it. 

The image only ever lasted a few seconds, and as usual his ghost was gone before she could blink. As his image dissipated, she leaned back as much as was possible and took a deep breath of the stale, recycled air. Normally, she would have been with Saw’s crew on their spacious freighter - especially for a drop on Sullust of all planets - but they, too, were under scrutiny by the Empire. Parting ways for a few months made the most sense. Being a little cramped in hyperspace was a small price to pay for their safety. She pushed her arms over her montrals and let them fall back onto her thighs with a light smack. The thought of ignoring Maul’s request for a return call in lieu of some much-needed tension release was… tempting to say the least. 

R5 beeped a snarky comment about calling her companion back, and its apt timing knocked Ahsoka right out of the mood. The droid was required for their jump anyway, and she did not exactly like the prospect of having it active and chattering while she sought release. Sighing, she leaned forward to boot up the holoprojector once more, then leaned back again as it connected. Maul hadn’t moved from his position, still twirling the pen from before. She didn’t bother with a redundant greeting.

“So what’s that ‘hunt’ you mentioned? That sounds… fun?” Ahsoka didn’t know if _fun_ was the right word for it, but considering how satisfied Maul had been after their run-in with the Inquisitor it seemed at least somewhat plausible.

“I would not know.” He shrugged, “The Nightbrothers hunt rancors as their mating season comes and goes, this is the first year I have been on-world for it.”

“You’ve never hunted alongside your own brothers?”

“Hmm. In this sense, no. Not for food and materials. It would be moot now anyway.” He reversed the spin of the pen and dropped his eyes from hers ever so slightly. She had dealt with him long enough to know that the anger on his face was just a façade, emphasized by his tattoos. His tone was once again curious, though he had his ways of making it sound condescending. “Have you ever hunted among your own, Lady Tano?”

She paused. If they were talking of food, then… no, she couldn’t recall killing for it. “It was a Jedi principle to never cut down innocent beings, even non-scentients, for personal sustenance.”

“No, no. I meant did you ever have the chance to hunt on _Shili_ , among your people?” His voice was like silk and she resented him for it. 

“No, I was too young before I left.” Maul sat in silence at that, still looking slightly away from her eyes. She licked her lips instinctively.

“The Jedi praxis was so against killing…” He stopped spinning the pen. “I have always wondered, Lady Tano, how did the carnivorous among them reconcile with that? They would not kill for a meal, though they acted as judge, jury, and executioner across the galaxy.”

It was her turn at silence. Ahsoka leaned the side of her chin in one hand. He had once, correctly, stated that it was the hypocrisy of the Order that pushed her away. Granted, this talk of food sources was not the hypocrisy that first came to mind, but it was a perfect microcosm of what they stood for, and what she could not be. Maul continued, half to himself as she thought. “I know there were a few other Togrutans among the Jedi, a handful of Zabrak, Pau’ans…”

“Those of us who were carnivorous usually supplemented our meals with protein bars - those Republic standard-issue bricks.” She laughed without humor, rolling her eyes. “We were not barred from meat, just… told not to take pleasure in it without understanding the cost.”

“Not exactly a bad way to think I suppose. As I understand it, the Nightbrothers only hunt if there is ample supply, and they honor what they take.” Maul tapped the pen against his chin and grimaced. “Your Jedi diet sounds archaic though.”

Ahsoka drummed her fingers in a line on her armrest, sighing. “Maul, if we are going to ruminate on the failings of my old school of thought I need to be in the right mood. Besides, this conversation can go both ways. Where the Jedi were hypocrites, the Sith are indiscriminate. Killing for killing’s sake isn’t exactly _good praxis_ either.”

“Personal gain is more to the point of the Sith. Whether or not one is willing to take necessary steps for those gains, well…” He sneered, tossing the pen up and catching it deftly. She was distracted by his dexterity, and wished he would just put the damn thing down. “I no longer call myself a Sith, though I follow their teachings. You no longer call yourself a Jedi, though you stick to their ideals. Forgive me, Tano, for taking interest in these similarities we share.”

“And forgive _me_ for seeing that as more reason to detest you.” Ahsoka spit back, though it was lacking vitriol, and they both knew it. She couldn’t help the slight uptick of her lips, and his eyes had that ever calculating look. “I have broken from my former path, while you still make every move for your own benefit.”

Maul raised a brow. “Helping your rebellion has not been for personal gain.”

“Hasn’t it? At the very least I’m the only person who can stand listening to your rambling thought experiments.” 

“Perhaps repayment is in order? You should get here in time for the rancor hunt - I’ve heard the subsequent feast is phenomenal.” Ahsoka met his gaze, detecting no sarcasm in his offer. “If your allies are facing Imperial scrutiny, this would be a good place for you to lie low, and the rebuilt town offers more than enough space. Whether the Empire knows of _my_ presence on Dathomir or not; if our cards have been played well, they will never expect to find _you_ here.”

It was the smart move to lay low for a while, and he had a point. No one would suspect her hiding on Dathomir. He mirrored her pose, finally putting the pen down and situating his chin on one hand. Ahsoka was reminded of a tooka-cat by his self-satisfied aura. She hated when he was right.

“Hmm.” She looked at him with half-lidded eyes and a creased brow, pretending to think it over and drawing things out a bit longer just so she could study the dark lines around his horns. Maul’s eyes dilated as he realized how she strung him along. “I have my own places to hide that I _know_ are safe, but I suppose a few days off the grid would be good.”

Maul nodded his head forward slightly, but kept his eyes trained on her. “Then I will see you soon my Lady”

Her only response was a hum of affirmation before she flicked the com off. Once it had completely powered down, she was left with nothing but the droning silence of hyperspace around her. She was acutely aware of how shallow and fast her breathing had become through their call. Ahsoka dropped her hand from her chin to her chest, drawing a light line along her sternum with a finger. She had three more hours before their first pit-stop for fuel. That would be far more than enough. 

“R5… turn off your audio and visual processors for a while.”

### Dathomir, Red Canyon cliffside

Ahsoka had never seen quite so many rancors together in one place. She was far from an expert on the beasts, but would definitely _not_ have pinned them as pack animals. From the hour they had spent atop the cliffs, following this particular group, she also gathered that they were matriarchal. The pack was stopped at a riverbank, and one of the matrons was currently teaching an adolescent a proper stalking position, poking and prodding at the younger one’s back to make it lean lower. She turned to one of the Nightbrothers, a warrior nicknamed Gouge whom she had talked with a few times during cargo pickups. “They seem awfully organized for wild animals. I vaguely recall reading that they are highly intelligent, near sentient even.”

“Cold feet ‘ruta? You’re kinda right, they’re semi-sentient - but a lot of beings, sentient or not, travel in packs. The Nightsisters would train them sometimes, but considering how much of a nuisance they can be if left unchecked, it’s better to cull the herd after their mating wraps up.” He pointed with the long hilt of the spear currently slung over his shoulder, “That male is the oldest in the bunch, he’s the goal for tonight. Lean meat, but tough hide, which is what we need most right now.”

“How do you draw him away from the pack?” 

Another Nightbrother - older and more battle worn - spoke up from her other side, “Once we get a clear shot, it’s not too hard. The sows tend to run off and leave their injured alone to fight - staying back to help would put the whole pack at risk of injury.”

“Sounds ruthless…”

“Nature usually is, Togruta. The problems come up if the first hit misses, or doesn’t incapacitate the beast. Then we’re back to stalkin’ for a few more hours.” He let out a gravelly laugh, “Better hope Raze is up to it eh?”

Gouge laughed along as her attention turned to the young Nightbrother at the helm of the group - a young Zabrak girl who was currently grinding her teeth in annoyance at the older Brothers. She was an odd sight, but Maul had explained to Ahsoka early on in their arrangement that - with the loss of the Witches from the main continent - Zabrak women in the area now lived among the Nightbrothers. It went against most of what she had learned of Dathomir in the Clone Wars, but Ahsoka was happy to see the small community thriving in their own discordant way.

“Shut up and let me focus.” Raze hadn’t even bothered looking at the men, and simply continued sizing up the herd. The two Brothers laughed among themselves and turned their conversation to more trivial matters, while Ahsoka settled back into waiting. She leaned heavily against the sheer slope of the dusty cliff behind them. Their group was precariously perched in a line some twenty odd feet above the forest below. The rancors’ collective sight was not good enough to detect them in the dark, but their sense of smell certainly was. Still, they did not seem to care in the slightest. The matron rancors were at ease, and refused to move the herd along, while the males all shifted around, anxiously snapping and biting at one another.

 _It’s a game of sacrifice they play_.

Maul had talked to her briefly that night, right before she joined the Nightbrothers on their hunt. She thought idly for a moment on why Maul had not come along - it seemed the stalking going on here was far less invigorating than that involving an unsuspecting prey, like their Inquisitor. Ahsoka mentally laughed at herself - getting into his mindset was so easy sometimes. Too easy, perhaps. She waited for a lull in the Brothers’ conversation before bringing the point up, somewhat rhetorically, just to see what they thought. “Do either of you know why Maul didn’t join? He said this was his first time being around for it.”

Gouge gave her a sidelong glance, “He’s more of a lone hunter type, don’t you think? Story goes that he lost the _one_ Brother that was close enough for him to hunt with. Don’t tell him this, but we kinda pity him for it.” 

The older Zabrak spoke up, “I remember his early years here, vaguely. We were born around the same time.” Ahsoka turned to look at him as he stared into the middle distance of the forest below. “He was taken from the Clan early on, but returned once to get his marks, then again when we were older to take some trial from that _Master_ of his. Mother Talzin nearly lost herself every time he came and went.” Her lekku twitched; so, there was more to it after all.

“There.” Raze spoke up as she shifted into position, aiming her bow. The eldest male rancor was now at the edge of the herd. A cacophony of weapon rattling came down the line of Nightbrothers as they readied themselves to scale down the cliff. Ahsoka made herself small for their sake - she was there to observe, not assist.

The electric drawstring of the bow was silent as she pulled it back, and the arrow just as silent as it flew.

### Dathomir, Shattered Ridge village

The fire before her was a welcome reprieve from the otherwise harsh cold of the mountain. This particular Nightbrother village was situated on the side of a short spire, and even with spring on its way in, the night was biting. Ahsoka had assisted in carrying the carcass of their kill up the mountain as the sun rose to meet them, then parted ways with the Nightbrothers for the day. As interested as she was in their customs, she was not entirely keen on skinning and preparing a rancor. The meal was enough to feed the entire village and then some, and had taken a full day to complete. She now sat opposite a line of Brothers, who were finishing the final step of their rituals before the meal, which was to rinse away the herbal hunting salves on their teeth and gums with the spring snowmelt. Eventually, Raze walked over to her, offering a steaming drink with a bright grin.

“I understand congratulations are in order?” Ahsoka gratefully took the offered mug and wrapped her fingers around it for warmth. “It’s probably not much coming from an outsider, but it seems like you did well for your first hunt.”

The girl laughed and leaned against the short wall Ahsoka had perched on, sipping from her own mug. “Your sentiment is appreciated, Togruta.” They remained in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the other Nightbrothers mill around the fire while they waited for the meat to finish searing. Something was nagging at Ahsoka as she watched the crowd. 

“I meant to ask this earlier… those herbs you all use, what purpose do they serve if you only wash them away later?”

“Well, besides the ancient ritual of it all, they help heighten the senses. It is only used prior to battles and important hunts. Too much for too long is hallucinogenic, but just enough is good.” Raze took a swig of her drink. “Stains the teeth something awful if you forget to wash a spot though.”

Ahsoka nodded along in understanding. She couldn’t recall if Maul had used such methods prior to their Inquisitor hunt. “There was some genetic fiddling done to the crop about, oh 60 years back maybe? Some of our botanists and chemists at the time managed to alter the potency, but the side effects made the stains last longer. Among us, no one minds of course, but clean teeth are a mark of good hunters whose senses are far beyond what the salve can do. Old age and clean teeth means that a Nightbrother has no need for it.” Raze glanced down into her empty mug, “I’m gettin’ more, you interested ‘ruta?”

Something inside Ahsoka’s montrals twitched as they picked up faint, but familiar, whirs and clicks as someone walked up behind them. Maul’s Force signature rolled over her like a fog. “No, thank you Raze. Go enjoy the night with your Brothers.” The young Zabrak nodded her head and raised her mug in farewell as she walked off.

“Did you find the hunt to be illuminating, Lady Tano?” She didn’t turn to look at him until he sat down at her side. Everything about his posture said that Maul was on edge from being in such close proximity, though it was entirely by his own doing. She could have moved her arm just a _bit_ to the left and they would have brushed elbows. The added warmth was welcome to Ahsoka.

“You have strange timing, Maul. Yes, the hunt was fascinating - I’m still surprised you didn’t come.” She relaxed her own pose slightly and watched as he cued off of it unconsciously, releasing some of his own tension.

“I have duties Tano… I’m sure I would have enjoyed it.” There was no regret in his tone. He kept it neutral, somewhat forcibly.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” She took a gentle sip of her drink as he raised a brow. Gouge’s words from the night prior rolled through her mind.

 _He lost the_ one _Brother that was close enough for him to hunt with._

“Too much waiting around, and too much reliance on others’ help. Not your style.”

Maul’s face loosened up into a lazy grin, and Ahsoka took the opportunity to glance at his teeth. She noted that the awful stains left from Mandalore had lightened up considerably. “Is that not exactly how we took down the Inquisitor on Nar Shaddaa?”

She grinned back at him over the lip of her cup, “Should have come along and proved me wrong then.” He simply sighed and leaned forward with his elbows on his metallic knees, and his fingers loosely woven together. The lazy grin remained. Ahsoka studied the patterns that graced his knuckles, lost in the delicacy of the lines as she thought.

“There are only ever two. That old Sith curse I have yet to shake.” He cracked his spine with a stretch then sighed. She could feel through the Force that he was fully at ease now. “I enjoy the thrill of battle alongside those I trust, but I have my limits. You of all people know that there are few out there in the galaxy who have earned that trust.” 

She enjoyed his company most when he was like this. It felt natural to talk to him, as an equal. Still, the ever present urge to push and prod remained. She knew very little of his past, only what she could gain from the Temple Archives and her masters’ stories. All the questions she had over the past year were eating away at her. Ahsoka glanced up at him, hoping to catch his eyes, though they stayed stuck to the fire before them. She motioned toward the crowd of Zabrak with one hand and spoke slowly. “Maul…? You didn’t join because of the memories it brings… being with them… right?” 

He was motionless. The fire light danced along the contours of his face in a mesmerizing display as she waited. “The salve… You talked with the young warrior about it.” Maul’s eyes flitted to her as she nodded, then returned to the fire. “I have used it only three times in my life, mostly on Mandalore. Between my fall at Kenobi’s hands, and my Brother’s death… the taste brings memories I would rather not swallow again.”

Ahsoka stayed silent. The thought of irritating the wound that was Obi-Wan Kenobi had surfaced a few times, only when she was deeply furious with the man before her. The topic of her former friend and mentor hurt her as well. Now though, the thought of twisting that knife in him felt… too far. She was marginally glad she had never given into that urge. 

“Do you ever resent the Jedi for taking you away from your people, Tano?” Maul’s voice was barely audible, and straining to be neutral again.

“Sometimes. I resent them for many things.” Her voice was small as well, against her will. “Other times, I thank them for what they gave me. It depends on if I allow myself to focus on the past, or force myself to look to the future. It would be pointless to agonize over something I never knew… something I never had.”

“If you did know it, if you _had_ a life on Shili… would you agonize over what could have been then?”

“I don’t want to focus on speculation and hypotheticals. There are too many of them.” Her voice turned solid, even as her throat constricted. She could sense where Maul was about to take the conversation and put up her walls preemptively. “My life could have diverged down many different paths, but I’m not going to turn around and return to them.”

Maul finally met her eyes, gold on blue. He relented, understanding what she had not said; there would be no more talk of Mandalore that night. Another uncharacteristically soft smile graced his haggard face. Ahsoka saw his hands twitch slightly out of the corner of her eye. “Lady Tano, there is something I need your assistance with soon.”

Her walls remained in place, although the fire in her had settled. “What is it? I’ll be here for another week at least.”

“Hmm, no it won’t be any time soon.” He paused, calculating. “I’m needed off world tomorrow anyway, and will be absent for the foreseeable future.”

Ahsoka was not sure what to do about the sudden pang of regret she felt at hearing that. “Something to plan for then?”

Maul made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, deep and growling. “Yes. Within the next month or two. Details will have to wait. If… that’s alright.” That pleading look was back yet again, as if he were sorry for even asking.

“Yeah. Of course.”

Maul nodded and turned away, and Ahsoka felt empty. There had been something in the Force mere moments ago that she only felt now that it was out of her grasp. She filled the void with small talk, and something to do. “You want a drink?”

He gave her a withering look. 

“Sorry.” Wrong small talk.

“Don’t be. Regardless of how I look, or act, I actually can drink and eat to a certain extent.” Maul laughed self-deprecatingly, “But… I prefer the company as we are. Sit with me for now, my Lady.”

Ahsoka smiled and watched the Nightbrothers pull rancor steaks from the fire. She put her mug - which she had been holding much too hard anyway - down on the wall beside her, and sat in silence with the man whose death she had once deliberated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It may be a good time to remind/point out that, as we get farther into philosophical/interpersonal talk, I don’t exactly want to condone one or the other wholly. I’m not writing fic as a means to soapbox about my personal moral compass. Like the note at the top of chapter one says, this is about growth and grey morality. I like to think that if you are reading up to this point, you know this. But let me cover my ass just a little bit here, ok? The internet gets weird about things sometimes.
> 
> Speaking of which, I miss angry Maul. Let's bring him back. Next chapter will earn the rating increase to full on Explicit. Have fuuuuuuun ;)  
> 


	5. Good Will and Malevolence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all knew this was coming. Explicit from here forward, though not every chapter will have smut. 
> 
> Also, disclaimer; I’ve never played Fallen Order but it gave us Dathomir lore so I might as well use it as a plot device. If you’re also in the dark, all ya need to know is that there was a fallen/dark Jedi on the planet post O66, but he’s gone by this time ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> \---  
> AND ONE MORE THING - I never got around to responding to last chapter's comments but thank u all I love u

#### 11 BBY - 5th standard month

### Mikkia, Rebel Alliance hideout

Ahsoka was truly comfortable for the first time in months. The underground bunker she was holed up in was far from cozy, but it kept good company. Hera sat across from her, via holoprojector just like everyone else she talked to lately. In these few months of hiding the two women had made a habit of calling one another and sharing a distant cup of tea.

“He’s stubborn. But, fun to work with, so that counts for something.” Hera’s projection smiled up at Ahsoka.

“You like him, hmm?” She teased the younger woman lightly. Hera’s face said it all, even while hidden behind the steam from her cup. It was nice, returning to the meandering gossip she remembered from her early years among the padawans. “Go on, spill. I know you want to.”

“I would, but I worry that I’m just so… infatuated with him because he’s the only living thing I’ve traveled with in a year.” Chopper chimed in then; some threat about shutting the com down. Hera ignored him. “If I dig that hole any deeper I may never get out.”

“Why would you want to?” Ahsoka took a sip of her own tea, a sharp, spiced blend picked up while on Dathomir. Hera didn’t meet her eyes while she thought it over. She let the Twi’lek take her time, content with the silence as much as the conversation. 

“I fear what could happen to him. He’s willing to throw his heart into the cause, don’t get me wrong - it’s just that _he_ would be safer if he didn’t. I don’t want to be the reason he’s in danger.”

Ahsoka could tell she was burying a lede, but didn’t want to push. Hera was a smart woman, and Ahsoka trusted that she would make the right choices, but she definitely got into her own head too much. “You think that he’s too passionate to worry about any consequences.”

“Yes… and I think it’s exactly why I care about him so much.”

A sudden, repetitive beeping from the opposite side of Ahsoka’s small room droned over their call. Maul’s com. “Hera, I need to take that.” The Twi’lek just nodded in understanding and waved in a silent farewell before their call cut out. Maul’s image replaced her’s as Ahsoka set his small holoprojector down.

“Lady Tano, I need you.”

### Dathomir, Lower Atmosphere

Neither of them talked while aboard Maul’s ship. The Mandalorian-made fighter was large enough for them to be out of each other’s metaphorical hair if they wanted, but Ahsoka found that she was most comfortable in the cockpit with him. Still, she kept herself guarded in the Force, and could tell he did as well. This was far different from their Inquisitor hunt. Things were less certain.

His call had been short and to the point, referring back to their discussion on Dathomir two months prior. It was mental whiplash going from chatting with Hera to talking business with Maul. “Lady Tano, I’ve gathered the last parts of this puzzle - those details I mentioned.”

“Well?” 

“A precise location. Far from my village in the southern hemisphere, there is a presence… A Jedi, or what was _once_ a Jedi. If I was on Dathomir for longer stretches at a time I may have caught the trace earlier, but…” Maul shook his head, he had seemed almost regretful. “I sense darkness - but beneath that hides something light. A burn mark on the Force.”

“Do you think it’s another Inquisitor…?” The conversation had invigorated her in the moment. Maul’s projection wouldn’t meet her eyes. 

“No, this is not the mark of the Sith. I do not understand it, and that is why I need you.”

Ahsoka had nothing better to do of course; Saw’s group was still facing heavy fire from the Empire on multiple fronts, and her Senators were still under scrutiny. She had to trust that the handful of rebel cells she had brought together would be okay on their own for a few more months. Yet again, she had accepted Maul’s request for help.

That acceptance led her to their current situation, flying high above the dark oceans of Dathomir. Ahsoka glanced out of the window beside her, observing the jagged coastline of the continent while she thought everything over. A set of tilted spires grew out of the forest on the horizon, and as they got ever closer to their goal, she began to sense the odd darkness he spoke of. Reaching out, she tentatively poked at the Force with her mind. It was exactly as Maul had explained; as if the outline of something dark and amorphous had been burned into the very stone of the land before them. The vague aura of a Jedi also touched her before dissipating away, and she wondered briefly if they were coming upon a survivor from the Purge. The darkness was so oppressive around them that it felt unlikely, but she steeled herself for that possibility regardless.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ahsoka saw Maul’s grip flex on the throttle. She was certain that he felt the same things as she did, but could only guess as to what he thought of it all. There had been no preparation prior to boarding his ship, no outfits to hide their identity this time. Tentatively, she stretched out through the Force to meet him; subtle and questioning. To her surprise, he readily responded, but offered only his own uncertainty back to her. He glanced at her wordlessly and sighed. 

Ahsoka leaned back in the copilot seat, and pulled her eyes away from the windows - the spires were getting ever larger ahead, and there was no doubt in her mind that they held the source of the darkness she felt. She stretched her arms above her head, weaving her fingers together behind her montrals and staring at the blinking lights above her. They flashed in such a fast and erratic sequence. It reminded her of the clone transports, which she only vaguely understood how to fly. As they came up on their target, she closed her eyes and mentally ran down the basics of her old flight lessons. Anything to keep her mind steady.

### Dathomir, Ruins of Kujet’s Tomb

The path up to their current position had been treacherous, and riddled with the decaying bodies of Nightbrothers and Sisters long dead. Their desiccated corpses had been crudely slain by lightsaber strikes. Though they both kept their respective Force signatures muted in the halls of the temple, Ahsoka could feel the pure rage flowing off of Maul in waves. Darkness of two kinds surrounded them; she kept her sabers lit and her mind closed while Maul stalked around in front of her, observing every minute detail of the temple. She had debated on offering one of her sabers to him as a means of light - the red of his own would not be nearly as effective in the already crimson atmosphere - but she remained wary of how the place was affecting him. 

Ahsoka knew how his anger manifested, she was deeply familiar with it in fact - but it was not just anger she felt coming from him. With every Nightbrother they passed, a deep anguish was painted among his tattoos. He would look back at her every few minutes, and she could see it clearly. Her curiosity kept her moving forward with him. Some small, empathetic part of her wondered if this was why he had wanted her to come, if she was meant to be his tether to the sanity he had gained back over the years.

The pair passed through a series of increasingly elaborate doors as they made their way to the heart of the temple. The architecture around them was not of Dathomirian make, at least not of their modern styles. Ahsoka was hesitant to speak while they traversed the area, otherwise she would have questioned Maul on the matter. She made a mental note to research the history of the planet more.

Eventually, they reached what seemed to be a dead end. Two Nightbrother bodies laid behind them; their once golden skin peeling away from the remains of atrophied muscles. It seemed that Maul had finally reached a tipping point, as he walked over to the two corpses and fell to his knees with a metallic crash. He sat there in silence, though his shoulders were tense with whatever emotions he now refused to release. Ahsoka was struck for a moment with an urge to comfort him, but opted instead to examine the far wall. 

She positioned one of her sabers within a crevice in the wall beside her, using the Force to keep it lit while out of her grasp. The wall before her had a subtle shine to it, smoothed out like a statue worn down by years of votive hands. In the center was a thin pathway which led to a larger arena, though she couldn’t make out anything specific on the other side. She leaned down to inspect the opening, shifting a few overgrown vines and roots out of her view. It looked large enough to squeeze through, but the movements of the plants caused a small cascade of stones to clatter down the wall. Ahsoka tested it again, and even more began to fall - walking through might be possible, but they would risk collapsing the path entirely.

Stepping back, Ahsoka decided it would be best to figure out _what_ was on the other side before barging through the wall. She sat, cross legged in a meditative pose, and reopened herself to the Force. Immediately, she was surrounded with the darkness she had felt on their flight in. It permeated the very stone beneath her. Just as she had felt before, however, there was a light. The pinprick of Jedi familiarity drew her in and acted as her waypoint as she felt around the metaphysical space of the temple.

_So there_ was _a survivor here._

Her mind stood at the edge of a constructed cliff - the outline of the arena behind the wall. The darkness originated from across the ravine, but so did the light. She pushed farther through the Force to a wide space, circular in shape like something of a shallow amphitheater rising out of the ravine below. The light burned from the center of it, from _within_ the stone.

_Who were you?_

She was pulled out of her meditation by the familiar sounds of Maul’s cybernetics as he walked up behind her. He stood at her side for a moment and his Force signature gently tugged at her own, willing her back to their physical plane. As she returned to herself, he spoke quietly, “There is a deep darkness here.”

“Yes.” Normally, she would have quipped back with something more sarcastic. Given the circumstance, neither of them were much in the mood.

“So we need to use it.”

Ahsoka sighed. “That sounds like a task more suited to you, Maul.”

“Hmm. I may require your assistance though.” He lifted an arm forward to run his hand along the stone. “These walls are neither Jedi, nor Sith, but my training always involved using the Rule of Two to my advantage - it is what I am familiar with, and it is what may work here.”

She looked at him from her position on the floor, debating, before turning away and closing her eyes once more. She knew she was being stubborn, but if push came to shove climbing through the thin entrance was still an option. She would not bow to the dark for something so trivial - her answers could be discovered through just a _little_ more meditation. 

She heard Maul’s clothes shift as he dropped his arm from the wall and shrugged. “Very well.”

Maul’s Force signature nearly suffocated her before she could pull out of her meditation fully. Ahsoka’s eyes peeled open to find Maul with his arm outstretched again, now with a gloved palm up and curled halfway to a fist. Mentally exploring whatever was on the other side of the wall would have to wait. She stood up and moved back from him, observing as the roots lining the wall twisted away from the barrage of Force energy he was inflicting upon them. A slick layer of sweat began to form on the back of Maul’s head, making his black tattoos appear almost blue in the white light of her saber in the wall. Cracks began to form along the smooth surface before them. The thin pathway became entirely blocked by smaller rocks, fallen due to the sheer amount of power he was channeling into the stone. She watched his arm strain under the pressure of the Force - the muscles beneath his tattoos twitched in a fast beat as he worked and she became mesmerized, if only for a moment. He would not be able to do this without harming himself.

Her saber in the wall flickered out and clattered to the ground as she cut her Force off from it. Ahsoka stepped forward and stuck her palm out, in line with her Zabrak companion. She breathed deep as she tapped into that closed, grey part of her that only ever surfaced when she allowed it to. The sound of crumbling stone became drowned out as soon as she touched upon Maul’s Force with her own, and was replaced with his heavy but even breathing. She matched its pattern, and together they turned both of their palms forward with a snap of their wrists. 

The wall went down spectacularly. 

Ahsoka had not realized she had closed her eyes, but when she reopened them everything was bathed in a subtle red glow from a series of skylights in the area ahead. The wall was gone, and what was left of it was scattered before them in large boulders. Just as she had felt though her meditation, the room was vast, terminating in a deep ravine with a towering amphitheater in its center. Across the ravine, was yet another hallway. 

Stuttering slightly, Ashoka took a deep breath and held it. She looked at Maul as she released it, and found his sharp eyes cutting into her. His face was unreadable. It brought up that same ache she felt whenever they would become cross with one another, though she sensed no anger in him now. Without breaking eye contact, he used the Force to bring her fallen saber to his hand, and offered the hilt to her wordlessly. She grabbed it from him, making careful movements so she would not touch him. Maul turned as the saber left his hand, and entered the room before them.

With her first step into the space, the meditation pathways she opened before began to unfurl once again. The central stadium’s point of light called to her faintly, as if asking her to understand it, to recognize it. Ahsoka walked on, only half aware of her surroundings as she returned to her meditative state. She sensed that Maul was aware of her shift, and was hovering around her like some lost pet waiting for its master to give a command; or like a predator, stalking its prey. She didn’t much care either way - she was too deep into her own mind to pay any mind to his intentions. The pinprick of light was right within her reach-

_Master Malicos?_

Maul’s voice came to her through the haze. “We can help each other across-”

“No need. I know who was here.” Ahsoka was breathless. She stood at the edge of the ravine, just as her meditation had shown. Maul looked at her expectantly as she gathered her thoughts, and one final nudge through the Force confirmed her suspicions, “He… he was a Jedi. Master Taron Malicos. I did not know him all too well, but,” She shook her head violently and put the heel of her hand to her forehead with a grimace. 

Maul kept his eyes trained on her. His voice dripped with a contempt not directed at her. “So it _was_ a Jedi. He must have hidden his Force from me… That symbol on all the Brothers’ chests, they must have been _loyal_ to him, yet they _died_ by a saber’s blade.” Maul’s face became a mask of fury as he took those same pathways through the Force which she had opened up, to examine Malicos’ remnants for himself. “I was not on Dathomir very much in those early years. It would not have been hard to hide this all from me. He was dark-”

Ahsoka began to pace, away from the edge to one of the intricately patterned walls. “No. _No._ He was a quiet man, calm, collected… A good general. I know who this was Maul, he was a Jedi Master deep and true. He would not use the Nightbrothers for his own gain. He would not Fall.”

“If you can sense who he is, then you can sense that is _exactly_ what he did.” Maul spun on her, pointing an accusatory finger in the direction of Malicos’ posthumous signature. Ahsoka saw a fire in his eyes that was not just angry, but _proud._ “He recognized the opportunity here. This place exists in the delicate space between the powers of Dathomir and the Darkness of the Force-”

She felt sick at the tone he had taken on. “He subjugated your people and you talk of him with _reverence_?” Her voice cracked in disgust.

A growl emanated deep from his chest with every word he spoke “Taking advantage of the Nightbrothers’ - _my peoples’_ \- acclimation to servitude repulses me on a personal level.” He stalked over to her position near the wall. “But, his _willingness_ to accept that darkness within himself, his _openness_ to his own soul, it freed him from that which held him down.” 

A chill went down her spine, “Are you implying that I… I’m not open to....” Something clicked within her and her voice reached a fevered pitch. “You brought me here on purpose. You knew about him!” 

He met her shout with his own. “Have we not established that I tell you no lies?”

Ahsoka let out a feral scream that she never could have imagined making, grabbed him by the shoulders, and pushed him roughly against the wall. Her nails dug into the thick leather of his vest as his hand shot up to grapple with her wrists. “I have been in this for the sole purpose of rebelling against the Emperor, but you’re still trying to bring me into that darkness that you hold so dear-” 

“Oh please,” He spat back at her, neck extending in an effort to get her off of him. Her forearms burned with how hard she pushed against his shoulders. They may have been the same height now, but he still had the vastly superior strength. She could feel the sharp line of his collar bones under her palms, even through his clothes. “Your goals are no longer purely charitable-” 

“What do you know of charity? You’ve never cared about another soul in your life-” 

Maul let out a roar of anger, pushing off of the wall and effectively tackling her to the ground. They fell roughly together in the dust, and she attempted to reach for her sabers, but the opportunity to roll them and pin him down presented itself instead. After a short scuffle, she managed to get both of his biceps trapped under her hands - held down partially by the Force - and his legs trapped by her own twisting around them. Her knees held his metal hips to the ground, and her feet kept his calves in place. He writhed for a moment and it was all she could do to focus on keeping him down. She looked down at his furious snarl. They were in a stalemate.

Maul’s eyes were blown wide. She stretched her neck as far back as she could to avoid the flailing of his head, barely missing a slice from his anterior horn. Her lekku danced with the movement, sliding lightly along his chest and neck. He could have bitten them if he wanted to gain the upper hand. Instead, he growled at her yet again. “You know _NOTHING_ of what I care for, and even less of what _YOU_ care for.” 

“ _I know what I care about.”_ Her own voice scared her in how deep it was, how _potent_ it sounded. Her arms trembled as she tried to keep him down. She _knew_ herself, who she was.

“You know what you _want_ , it is not the same _My Lady_ .” Maul’s head fell back onto the cold stone floor with a snap. The fire was still in his eyes, boiling their molten gold hue. In the pause between words, their labored breathing was deafening. “You know what you want, _so pursue it_.”

She shut him up in the only way that felt possible at the moment. Her lekku folded between them at odd angles as she crashed her mouth to his. Maul responded readily, matching her intensity move for move. His tongue passed her lips slightly and on instinct one of her hands shot up to grab his chin. With his left arm now free, he wrapped it around her hips and under her armor plates, latching onto her backside in a vice grip. She squeezed her fingers around his jaw, willing his mouth to open more to allow her own tongue entrance. He tasted of the spiced tea she had come to associate with his people - sharp, bitter, and heady. They vied for control of one another until they both had to release for air.

Ahsoka leaned back, hand still at his chin, holding his face down. He breathed heavily beneath her, mouth open, chest rising and falling smoothly. She made a calculated move - releasing his right arm for a split second to grab the saber at her hip. The moment his arm was free he reached for her thighs, but stopped as soon as she lit the weapon between them. His eyes snapped to the white glow as she dangled the saber above his chest, point down. 

“So that is how it’s going to be, My Lady?” His voice sent an electric shock through her, but she did not grace him with a response. The hand at his chin snaked away, as she moved it down his chest to the wide belt at his waist. His gaze slid to her face as she tested the waters, and he practically _purred_ when she danced her fingers across the scarlet skin under his vest. Ahsoka tilted her head in thought, rotating the saber slightly in her hand as she looked down at the man beneath her. He was agitated, angry, and _desperate_.

Damn it, she was too.

She stood, keeping her blade pointed at his hearts the whole time. “You clearly want this too. So stay the fuck down.” She placed a foot at the base of his ribs, where flesh turned to metal. Maul rolled his eyes at the display of dominance, but eagerly began caressing her calf; he got to work peeling off the plastoid armor layers and undoing the closures on her boots. She disengaged her saber, putting it away and working at her leggings in one smooth movement. In no time, she was naked from the waist down. 

Maul attempted to prop himself up on his elbows, biting sharp lines up one naked knee. Ahsoka leaned down to push him back to the ground immediately, and got on her knees above him, sitting solidly on his clothed chest. “Well?”

Maul’s grin was terrifying, and it only further exhilarated her. She stared at the patterns surrounding his lips as he grasped at her ass again, this time with both hands, and pulled her hips forward to meet his mouth. The tickle of air as he breathed her in sent Ahsoka’s mind into pure static. His lips only barely brushed the line of her labia and her back curved into a sharp arc. Her hands shot forward to grasp at his crown of horns. He growled warningly at the touch, but made no move to stop her. Instead, his efforts intensified, and when he finally moved his tongue into her soaked folds to flick lightly at her clit she let out a high, keening moan. It had become so rare for her to hear such a noise from her own throat that she couldn’t help but revel in the narcissism of it all.

As he worked at her hips, he dragged one arm away from her ass, up to the back closures on her shirt, undoing them deftly. Once she realised his motives, she promptly removed the offending article and was fully bare to him. He slid his arm along her spine, under her headtail, and held the back of her neck with a light pressure. His long fingers could have closed the loop, and the thought of that alone made Ahsoka moan again. Maul’s Force flowed through her in waves, tangling into the fabric of her mind, leaving dewey and tattered strands in its wake. He was all around her, merging her sensation with his own. She wrapped her Force around him in turn, constricting ever so slightly and earning another satisfied purr.

The hand still on her backside snaked under her thigh, down to meet his tongue, and he wasted no time preparing her any further. Maul brazenly pushed two gloved digits into her, getting nearly two knuckles deep before her inner walls constricted so powerfully around them that he could go no further. Ahsoka shouted blissfully as he prodded at her both physically and through the Force, teasing out her last taut thread and willing her to snap. Her hips rutted sporadically, causing Maul’s head to bob with the motion. She vaguely wondered if the horns at the back of his head would be damaged by the solid ground, before all coherent thought disintegrated from her mind. It felt like she had been on the precipice of release for an eternity, held there by the man pinned under her hips. She was fixated so intently on chasing her release that the moment Maul slid a third finger into her, it was all over.

Ahsoka came undone around him, brokenly screaming into the empty hall. Through the Force, he enveloped her - warm and hazy - it was all she could focus on in that moment outside of her own bodily pleasure. With every lingering spasm she felt, Maul sent her a wave of wordless praise and satisfaction. When she regained some semblance of stability, she tilted her head down to look at him. Maul stared back, piercing eyes blown wide as he remained unmoved from her hips, breath hot against her still. At some point in her blind ecstasy she had drawn blood from the bases of his horns with her blunt nails, and if she had the ability to at the moment, she might have felt bad.

She gingerly released his head, relaxing her hands out of their tense pose. A brief urge to caress the tattoos along his brow came to her, though she ignored it and opted to lean back and place her hands at his hips behind her. Just another means of keeping him down. She used the fabric of his pants as slight leverage to pull herself away from his mouth, dragging a wet line down his chin, to his neck, then his clavicle. For a moment, she was lost in admiring how good he looked with her painted across his face, but a sudden sensation dawned on her. Ahsoka turned around, twisting her ribs as much as she could to make sure she wasn’t imagining things.

Her hips rose and fell slightly on his chest as she felt Maul’s chuckle. So he was more than just a simple droid below the belt. Ahsoka’s heartbeat picked up pace as she wasted no time in undoing his pants. It had been years since she had last laid with someone, let alone a _man_ , so she was going to take full advantage of whatever he had to offer.

Maul sat up fully, sliding her down so she was straddling his thighs while she worked at his clothes. He took to sucking on one of her breasts, pulling harshly at her nipple with his teeth while her hands continued their mission. It was not the easiest of tasks, considering her position over him, so she allowed it when Maul grabbed her by the waist and repositioned them. Once he tossed her to the ground where he had been just moments ago, she was finally able to free him of his trousers. He towered over her reclined figure, caging her in by leaning both arms against the floor on either side of her head. 

Ahsoka explored the new expanse she had uncovered. Maul’s prosthetic was a mix of metal plating, smoothed out by intermittent ridges of thick silicone so there were no sharp edges along the shaft where the plates met. Her curiosity got the best of her, so she reached a hand down between them to test it. The mechanics in the shaft flexed smoothly under her ministrations, and Maul took in a sharp hiss of air as she ran a thumb over the soft rubber head.

“Contact sensors. You can feel it…?” Ahsoka was hoarse and breathless as she shifted her hips and raised a leg over his back to align them.

“All of it.” Maul’s teeth were gritted as if in pain, while his eyes slid shut as if in ecstasy. The timbre of his voice made her muscles clench and she let out a light moan as the head prodded at her entrance. The Force radiating from him was possessive - she tore her gaze away from his hips to watch his eyes rake down her naked figure. They both paused, tense and heated. Maul’s hands flexed beside her montrals, and with little other warning, he pushed his hips down and forward with such force that she took him in one smooth motion. While he released a relieved noise - somewhere between a growl and a sigh - Ahsoka’s mouth shot open in a silent shout. 

The pressure against her still overstimulated walls immediately sent her into another orgasm - stretching pain from the fast intrusion mixed with a blinding pleasure. Maul’s head fell onto her right lek, breath hot and heavy on her neck while she pulsed around him and squirmed even closer to his hips to take as much of him as physically possible. She grasped at his biceps, chest, back, whatever she could reach to gain back some form of stability. Meanwhile, Maul sat there while she writhed beneath him, eyes cast down between their bodies to admire the show. 

As she came down from her unexpected high, Maul sat up on his knees and stripped off his gloves and what was left of his tunic, tossing them to the side where the rest of their armor and weapons lay scattered. Ahsoka could feel how he coveted her through the Force, and sent her own waves of pleasure back to him. His response was to lean back over her and purr. He caressed her montrals with one hand and moved the other to her pelvis, his fingers splayed wide as he pushed down to increase the pressure she felt inside. She was achingly satisfied in that moment. Turning her head to push her lips to the inside of his wrist, she moaned deep and long. Her teeth raked against his skin as she attempted to speak, hoarse and sedated. “Maul…”

He whispered harshly into her cheek with a kiss. “Shh. Any more talking and you’ll hurt that pretty throat of yours.” She growled at him and turned to capture his lips with her own. He spoke again, into her mouth, “Let me take over. Let yourself go.”

She responded with another growl, and a wiggle of her hips to get back into the motion of their connection. Maul met her with a thrust, greedy and fast. Her mind was in a precarious place - one side of her was content to let him use her as he pleased, another _ached_ to take her control back, to make him beg beneath her. He pushed into her again, just as rough, while the debate danced around her mind.

“Quiet your thoughts.” A demand.

“Stay out of my head.”

“I said not to talk. You will have your chance to _repay_ me later My Lady.” Maul rammed into her again, managing to get a squeak out of her as he picked up the pace. “Besides, did we not just establish -” 

Another thrust. “That I will be getting _just-_ ” 

And another. “As much out of all this-” 

He didn’t stop. “As you?”

She only half listened to him, too focused on the movements that punctuated his words. There was something to the fact that he could feel everything just as much as her - that he needed her in the same way she needed him - that she took extreme pleasure in. Ahsoka spoke, breathless as his pace got ever faster.

“You tell me I don’t know what I want…” Her right hand grasped at the back of his head, pulling their foreheads to one another so he was forced to look directly into her eyes. To her own surprise, there was no more anger in her voice, and she said it with a crooked smile. “Then the minute I try to figure it out, you crawl into my mind and tell me to stop?”

Maul’s response came with a small, short huff of laughter, “You need to just _feel._ Enough thinking for now hmm?” 

She let out a half-annoyed, half-indulgent moan while dragging her nails across his shoulder blades and down his spine. Her fingers hopped from one vertebra to the next with every jolt of his hips to hers. Maul reached down to her hips, grasping at the supple flesh there and using his head beside hers to balance his upper body. Whatever gloriously painful pressure she had felt from his cock before had now melted into sheer bliss as he dug his thumbs into the dips between her pelvis and her thighs.

The Force thrummed like an instrument around them. Where before he had been a storm around her, they now acted in tandem. Maul hit a point within her, deeper than before, that made her waist arc sharply up and her throat release a keening cry. He took the opportunity to scoop a hand under her back, supporting her ribs and keeping the skin of their chests in contact for as long as possible. 

Everything around Ahsoka suddenly felt unsteady, as if she were falling. One of her arms shot out to ground herself with the dusty stone beneath her, while the other grasped at the rivets in his cybernetics in search of a handhold to steady them both. Maul was relentless, an incoherent part in her mind was shouting that it was all too fast, too much, and that she needed more. She was babbling nonsense to Maul, her lips catching slightly on the stud in the shell of his ear. 

His breathing had become deep and guttral, something closer to a growl came out with every breath. The creases of his face were sharp and shining with sweat. Maul slid the hand he kept beneath her farther up her ribs to make her head tilt back at an even sharper angle. The tip of her lekku drew sporadic patterns in the dust as they shook. Ahsoka shut her eyes and stretched her chin up, offering her neck to his mouth with a long moan of his name. “Mau-”

“Call me by my title.” He cut her off as he kissed a hot stripe up her throat from her collar to her jaw, hissing as he went. “You are My Lady, Ahsoka, and I am Your Lord.” 

“M-” It was all too much, “My Lord. Lord Maul.” The words felt beautifully sinful on Ahsoka’s tongue. “Please. My Lor- Ah!” 

Maul slammed into her at a breakneck pace, and for the third time that night, Ahsoka came undone. Her body constricted around him and he stalled, buried to the hilt to make sure she felt every part of him - the spot where his head curved up into the soft inner flesh of her walls trembled, and it was as if nothing in the universe existed for her except for that single point between them. Her orgasm was not loud this time, not at first. A silent scream she could not release rolled up through her, bouncing within the hollow cavity of her chest which Maul still held onto for dear life. Every point of contact with him was on fire, and when the scream did come, it was short and shrill, and petered out in a deeply satisfied whimper. 

In her haze, Ahsoka had not even noticed Maul reach his own orgasm. When she opened her eyes pure ecstasy was painted among his dark tattoos. She felt no fluid pass between them - a limitation of his prosthetics, she was sure - but that did nothing to stop the wave of his mental release. 

Their faces were still mere inches apart, and their breath mingled in the middle. Gold eyes met blue, and as they held onto one another and loosened their tense muscles back down to the floor, Ahsoka couldn't help but marvel at his beauty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *unironically blasts NIN’s Closer while I write this*
> 
> \---  
> I _think_ this chapter and the next one are going to be the longest of the whole set. Where this chapter has mostly physicality and action, chapter 6 is planned to have action at the beginning and a LOT of talking at the end. After that I expect to go back to the 3-4k average word count? maybe? Once the whole piece is finished, I plan to go through and update a lot of it, add descriptions/more action here and there, etc. and at some point I’m gonna toss y'all some “b-sides” that are just smut :P
> 
> I hope to get chapter 6 out early next week thanks to the holiday, after that updates may slow down as I'll be doing more in-office work as the state opens back up. For better or worse.  
> Cheers~


	6. All Within the Realm of Possibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning happens to have some similarities to current and ongoing events here in the States - unintentionally so. While I do not like to conflate fiction with real people’s lives, I would be remiss to write about such things as rebellion and racist implications, and not make a small statement. I have said in previous notes that I am not here to soapbox (like everyone else, that is what my social media is generally for) but I stand with BIPOC, now and forever. To my fellow white readers, please always remember to listen to the people who are so often drowned out by the system that caters so heavily to our skin tone. 
> 
> Thank you for reading my silly fanfiction. Keep your hearts open for those who are hurting most.

####  10 BBY - 1st standard month

###  Corellia, Shipyard Alleyways

She knew the risk she had taken in coming to Corellia - but Ahsoka had not expected anything  _ close _ to the number of Imperial Stormtroopers she was currently running from. She was certain none of the troopers at her heels knew who - or what - she was. They would have called upon their Inquisitors if that were the case. No, she just happened to be a target of choice out of the many rebels who had scattered out of the camp. 

Contact with the small resistance growing on Corellia had been a bust. The group was not interested in anything outside their own planet, and considering the abundance of resources on-world that were prime and ready to be stolen from the Empire, Ahsoka had little to bargain with other than a moral standpoint. It was unsurprising, but considering that recruiting them was the first major mission she had taken on after her long months of hiding, she was struggling to find any positives in this trip. Their camp had been raided mere moments before she was about to take her leave.

So here she was; lungs burning from rushed breathing, and legs ready to give out at a moment's notice. She was relegated to the back alleys for the time being, as every main walkway was already blocked off. The hangar which housed her ship was still another two miles away. With her own two legs as the only immediate means of reaching it, the troopers would surely narrow her location down before she got anywhere near the bays. As she stalked around in the shadows, Ahsoka passed a few shady groups who she might have been able to pay off - all members of the local gangs surely. Any number of the beings she passed could have just as easily sold her out, but her time was running out, so she made the calculated decision to bargain with some of them while the skylanes were still relatively open. Her pronunciation of Antarian was rough at best, but a pair of Gotal smugglers were the first who seemed open to the credits she promised. Soon enough, she was above the shipyards and speeding to the hangar bays.

Their offered ride was a rusted excuse of a speeder, but it did what was needed. Ahsoka kept her eyes to the ground while the Gotal pair flew, watching as bands of troopers stopped people at random for questioning. On one occasion she saw a Corellian Resistance member actually get apprehended. The dull morning light reflected off of each and every white helmet below like a starmap; but eventually, the plastoid domes began to thin out the closer they got to the hangars. Ahsoka took it to be a good sign.

Just as the pilot began her descent to the hangar bay entrance, Ahsoka heard other speeders behind them being pulled out of the lanes by even more Imperials. She made an effort not to turn and look, holding her hood steady as updrafts pushed at them. Their landing was rough, and Ahsoka made to leave the speeder quickly - but not fast enough apparently, as the second Gotal already had a blaster pulled on her. Ahsoka simply sighed as he spoke.

“Free Togrutans don’t just come to Corellia, darling. We know you’re one of the ones they want, and so did everyone else in those alleys. A mask and hood don’t help much when you’re the only one of your species in town.” The pilot got out of the speeder with a bleating laugh as her partner spoke, also keeping her blaster trained on Ahsoka’s chest. 

The pilot spoke up, in Basic this time so there would be no confusion. “It’s double the offer or you’re dead.” Ahsoka noted with a bit of intrigue that the weapon had no power cell - so at least one of them was bluffing. This was laughably easy.

A rattling noise started up behind them as a large group of Stormtroopers pulled up in a transport. She had the double credits they wanted, but had no assurance they wouldn’t sell her out anyway. Ahsoka had never planned to pay this half of the bargain anyway. She waved a palm at the Gotals, watching as the Force energy she imparted upon them took effect. Their eyelids lowered and their jaws went slightly slack as she sent them a calming string of emotions. “You have no need for payment, you are here to pick a friends up from the docks.”

The pilot repeated the phrase to Ahsoka as her partner simply nodded. The noise from the troops behind them got louder as they came to inspect the hangar. She still refused to turn and look at them, estimating from noise alone that there were about fifty feet between her and the horde. She exited the speeder as naturally as possible, keeping her Force tether to the pair intact until she was relatively hidden among the hangar crowd.

Her ship was on a lower dock. She quickly paid her rental fee to one of the droid tellers before waiting among a group of people by the lift. The familiar static of vocoders buzzed behind her as the Stormtroopers made their entrance, cutting through the crowd with little regard for the denizens of the planet. Ahsoka nearly reached for her sabers as she heard one of them begin to shout, but stopped as she realized it was directed at a different wanderer who resisted their questioning. It was all a matter of timing. She lightly used the Force to pull the lift to their level faster - the mob of bodies exiting had never felt like such a boon to her. The drop of her stomach as she rode the lift almost made her sick. It stopped four times before reaching her goal, and with each consecutive level more troopers dotted her vision. Ahsoka kept her breathing steady as she finally exited - the x-wing was in sight. 

Along with two troopers, kicking R5 around.

A long string of curses ran through Ahsoka’s head. Turning around now would be too conspicuous, as would trying to mind trick the two troopers - there were at least ten more around the rim of the bay, all within direct view of where she was docked. Time slowed as she thought out her options, while the cadence of her steps remained consistent. If it were less crowded she could have caused a distraction somewhere off to the side. An explosion of some sort would be ideal, but she didn’t want to be the direct cause of anyone’s pain. She had seen enough innocents tossed around like trash in the past hour, so that was off the table. The more immediate option would be to knock out the troopers, lift R5 into the astromech port with the Force, and have it boot the system while she climbed in. It would give her away for sure; but, if she ran and executed a well-angled jump into the cockpit it might give her just enough of an advantage to speed out of the immediate area.

There was sudden shouting to her left. An opulent looking Falleen woman - a Black Sun operative by the looks of her freighter and crew - was raising all hell beside her impounded ship. This worked in Ahsoka’s favor, as the troopers began to congregate near the woman and away from her bay. The troopers bothering R5 took notice, but did not leave their post. It would have to do.

When she was only a few feet away from the troopers, she preemptively sent the same calming waves she had used before. Their shoulders went slack, and they turned around to face her, ready for whatever instruction she would place in their minds. 

“You do not need to question this droid, soldiers. I will take it from here.” 

The Stormtroopers nodded, their modulated voices assenting to her demand. Ahsoka kept the spell going, even as they walked away. She couldn’t keep up like this for such long stretches of time - her control of the Force was wearing thin.

R5 began beeping out something furious about leaving it alone to defend the ship for so long, but she just pointed at the astromech port and the droid shut itself up. As it turned itself around and prepared its booster jets, a scream echoed through the dock.

All hell broke loose. Ahsoka glanced to the origin of the scream and found the Black Sun operative on her knees, clutching her bleeding head as her crew started swinging at the Stormtroopers in retaliation. One of the troopers had a red stain of blood across their chest. 

A blaster bolt from the opposite side of the bay hit the bloodied trooper square in the back. Another bolt immediately followed as she watched, hitting a second trooper’s helmet clean off. Ahsoka spun to see the attacker - no,  _ attackers _ \- that had started the firefight. They were in dark clothing, all loose, high quality, and familiar.

They all wore Crimson Dawn insignias.

_ Interesting. _

The troopers didn’t take long to start shooting back. She, and a handful of others in between the two belligerent groups, ducked for whatever cover they could find. In Ahsoka’s case, it was by the landing gear of her x-wing. Sirens began to blare around them. It was now or never for her, and it seemed her ‘now’ was getting shorter by the second. The bolts continued to fly, so she motioned for R5 to hurry up and get in the ship. She would worry about herself once the computers were online. The droid’s jet boosters were drowned out by the blasts around her, and a new, heavier sound. More Stormtroopers entered the bay, their boots creating a repetitive drumming. They were led by an Imperial Naval officer this time, whose pale face looked bright and furious at the display before him. Ahsoka could only barely hear his screams.

“What the hell are you all doing? That is a rebel-model ship! Don’t focus on the smugglers and gangs!”

_ Oh shi- _

An electric screeching resounded above her, and the husk of R5 came crashing down at her heels. Ahsoka spun to check on the astromech, but it was too late. The bolt had hit directly through both the navigation hard-drive and main processing unit under R5’s head pivot. There would be no hope in saving any of the poor thing’s inner workings. She had only a brief moment to cradle the chassis in mourning before she was kicked into action once more by a shot just barely grazing her cowl. The fabric began to burn from the plasma, and she had no choice but to discard her cloak so she wouldn’t sear her montrals. At the very least, she still had the mask from Maul.

Ahsoka’s one saving grace was the band of Crimson Dawn mercenaries - they wasted no time in adding the new troopers to their target practice. It seemed the Black Sun group had also regained some standing, and their small crew joined the fray. The first set of troopers lay dead at their feet, and the new set was now torn three ways - between the Crimson Dawn, Black Sun, and Ahsoka. She was more than happy to slink away while the gangs did their dirty work of course, but getting from her position at the back landing gear to the cockpit would be much harder than planned under direct fire. She grabbed her sabers. Consequences be damned.

The chaos around her dissipated, and all she heard - all she  _ felt _ \- was the energy flowing into her sabers as she lit them. She saw the Officer shouting something, his face going red as she deflected bolt after bolt from hitting her ship. Ahsoka took one step forward and blocked a blast aimed at one of the lateral turbines. Another, and she blocked a shot aimed at her chest. With every shot taken at her, another Stormtrooper fell to the gang’s fire on either side of her. With every fallen trooper, another took its place. The shots _ she _ deflected never once hit the line of white armor before her.

_ She couldn’t hurt them. Her clones. Even as they shot at her and Rex, even as they aimed to kill. _

Ahsoka couldn’t breathe. Her legs shook with each step as she continued to push forward to the cockpit, and her mind was in tatters. She was getting sloppy with her deflections, and in her turmoil a stray bolt got past her defense. With one more hit, the already battered glass of the cockpit shattered above her, and with it went all hopes of Ahsoka leaving the planet’s atmosphere.

She flinched as large chunks of glass rained down around her, some of them molten from the plasma blast. Ahsoka was thrown off her rhythm, and another set of bolts got past her, one barreling directly through the turbine engine to her left, another breaking through the hull near the fuel tanks, nearly blowing the whole thing up. With the ship being of no use, and her odds getting worse by the moment, she changed tactics. She forcefully cleared her mind, repeating a mantra to herself;

_ These are not my men. These are not the soldiers I know. _

As the troops and gangs continued to hold their stalemate, she fell back to her position by the landing gear and reached deep within herself. Her mind tricks from earlier may have depleted most of her energy, but this final push was necessary.

_ These are not my men. They destroyed what I know. _

Ahsoka shot her arms out in front of her, sending with them a wall of her anger and sadness through the Force. Metal on metal screeched as her x-wing slid across the bay and into the Imperials, crushing a large portion of them. She didn’t spare it an extra glance as she turned and ran to the Crimson Dawn lackeys. One of the Dawn’s crewmen raised their blaster to halt Ahsoka’s sprint, but the boss stopped them from following through. She slid on her thighs to the relative safety of their hiding spot, right as the remaining Stormtroopers regained themselves and began to shoot again. The boss’s hand came into her view to help her up.

“What’s the plan now  _ Jedi _ ?” Ahsoka turned toward the voice - it was Vos’ lieutenant, whom she had only met a few times before but recognized immediately. Unlike the rest of the crew, she wore no mask and was dressed to the nines, even now.

Ahsoka’s breathing was labored. “So much for secrets now, huh Qi'ra?”

“I had my suspicions when my Lord talked of you. We’ll make sure the boys stay quiet - can’t promise anything from the Sun though.” The woman paused to take a few pot shots and signal for her men to push forward. “So. Your plan?”

“Don’t let your men get too close. Shoot where I tell you.” Qi'ra looked annoyed, but nodded at Ahsoka’s words and told her men to hold back a bit. 

Closing her eyes, Ahsoka stroked the dying flame of the Force within her chest once more. Even in its blaster-ravaged state, she could mentally navigate the old x-wing. She searched for the point of weakness at the fuel tank, where the blaster had hit earlier, and with a slight twitch of her fingers it was open and spilling onto the broken bodies of the troopers beneath it. She heard Qi'ra laugh and raise her blaster, knowing exactly where to shoot. 

The subsequent explosion was blinding, and caused a splitting noise to ring through her montrals. Ahsoka ducked her head as the massive heatwave hit her. Pitch black smoke rolled over the crate she was hidden behind, and she was grateful for the mask yet again. To her right, Qi'ra donned a respirator and waved her arm to dispel the dark soot. Soon, it was replaced by the light of golden and green flames. Once the blaster fire had completely stopped, she stood to examine the results.

The blast did exactly what she had planned; not a single Stormtrooper stood alive before them. The smell of melting plastoid and burning flesh was pungent, but Ahsoka couldn’t bring herself to feel remorse. In fact, she couldn’t bring herself to feel much of anything. Cheering from the surviving Black Sun crew across the hangar gradually replaced the ringing in her montrals. She felt the weight of a small hand reach for her shoulder, and turned to find Qi'ra looking at her expectantly.

“We were lucky to run into you here, I suppose. It seems that this deal might go through after all.” She motioned for her men to go meet the Black Sun crew while they talked.

“Where is your ship.” Ahsoka wasn’t asking - a knack she had picked up from Maul. She was tired, angry, and at the end of her rope.

“Demanding, aren’t you? No wonder he likes you.” Qi'ra gave a haughty chuckle, but was otherwise blunt with her. “Our freighter is docked two flights directly down. Take the maintenance walkways and tell them I sent you.” She unclasped a small brooch from her coat and offered it to Ahsoka, who took it wordlessly before the woman turned away with a lofty spin.

Ahsoka watched her walk swiftly across the hangar, passing by the husk of R5 as she went. She would have liked to see the droid off properly, but even now she still felt too exposed. After quickly surveying the rest of the destroyed hangar, she turned to follow Qi'ra’s directions to the lower levels. 

As promised, the ship guards allowed her entry as soon as she offered up the pin and Qi'ra’s consent. The light freighter was spacious, and empty with the exception of two more guards loudly playing a game of sabacc in the cockpit. It felt more domestic than she would have expected. She sat down on one of the plush couches in the shared central cabin and laid her head back on the wall with a stuttering sigh. Her hand toyed lightly with the small pack at her hip - her rations had all been blown to hell with the ship, as well as her holoprojector connected to Maul. 

All she had now was the recorder for her messages to Rex.

###  Deep Space, Inner Rim, Aboard the _First Light_

Ahsoka stood by the window of Vos’ office, ignoring whatever debate the man was currently having with Maul’s projection in the middle of the room. Hyperspace continued to slide past them in its ever hypnotizing pattern. At one point, Qi'ra stepped up beside her to share an exacerbated glance as the men went around in circles. Ahsoka had sat in on a number of their meetings, generally the ones related to smuggling operations, so this was nothing exceptionally new. Now, though, she was here out of necessity. Vos had agreed to let her use his personal communicator to contact Maul, but insisted on getting his own matters attended to first.

“My Lord, I am certain that he won’t fall through. He hasn’t yet, and he owes me a favor.”

“And you’re  _ certain _ that those pirates your predecessor left you won’t be an issue this time?” Ahsoka felt Maul’s annoyance and disbelief at Vos' appeal. She didn’t quite know - or care - what they were talking about, and instead focused inward. Throughout the conversation he had sent a few tendrils of his energy to her through the Force - a mute conversation within an audible one, private only to them. She sent her own thoughts back.

_ His voice irritates me. _

_ I love it when we agree on things. _

The sound of Maul’s cybernetics cut through the com system and Vos’ petitioning finally came to a halt. Ahsoka turned slightly, to see Maul’s larger than life projection leaning down as if to intimidate the pale man.

“Enough talk Dryden. I don’t care who you hire, just get me the results. Now, out.”

Vos turned his eyes to Ahsoka briefly, only barely hiding his contempt, before clearing his throat and ushering himself and Qi’ra out of his office. She was left alone with the Zabrak’s projection and the low hum of hyperspace. Her breathing was shallow, and her face impassive as she turned to look at him.

Maul’s voice was smooth, comparatively quiet after his anger at Dryden Vos. “That coaxium your people need should finally be deliverable.”

“That’s what all that was about? We made that deal months ago, I thought we passed the business over to Saw?”

“Life has a habit of getting in the way. The Pykes decided to be obstinate, and I can’t be too involved or I’ll lose control of all of them. He’s only just getting someone on it now.” Maul ran a hand down his face in annoyance, but relaxed in his chair as he turned to look at her. Though the  _ First Light’ _ s high-tech projector could show the red of his skin, Ahsoka thought it made him look pale and feeble - especially now with the blue light of hyperspace filling the cabin. As she walked over to take a seat at Vos’ desk, she felt a small pang of longing to have his physical presence instead.

“So what happened?”

Ahsoka crossed her arms over her chest, tighter than intended, and shrugged. Her voice was measured and perfectly neutral. “Everything went to hell. Things happen.”

He raised a brow at her, seeing right through the tone. “Yes… but  _ things _ do not usually send you running to me for help.”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been doing this whole time though? Running to you for help against the Emperor?” 

“Perhaps…” Maul was quiet for a moment. His eyes shifted as they studied her face. Her heart rate was too fast and her breathing too slow, and she was certain he could sense it through the projection. “Ahsoka does this set up not seem mutual to you still? I was under the impression that we organized these smuggling operations as a  _ joint _ effort against my former master?”

“Yeah…” She turned her head away from him, quietly gathering herself after the yearning his words shot through her chest. “Yes. I’m sorry Maul, I shouldn’t discredit your side in all this. You’re trying to do something right-” 

She choked out a laugh, it was the only noise she could release through the tightness of her throat. Maul’s eyes twitched imperceptibly at her distress, and she began to shake her head. Her lekku swayed with the motion, and without realizing it fully she felt a hot, angry tear roll down her cheek. She couldn’t stop the motion of her head shaking, as if her neck moved on its own. She stood to do something, anything, other than sit before Maul and weep. The Crimson Dawn holoprojector was more advanced than their personal set had been, so there was no place in the office that it could not track her movement. She resented it, but her head was nowhere near clear enough to think of turning it off. Part of her didn’t want to. Ahsoka lifted her arms, the tight fabric of her sleeves pulling over her biceps and scratching at her skin as she put her hands on the back of her headtail. Her breathing was rough and choking, but at least the stretch of her arms hollowed out her ribcage enough to allow more air in.

“My Lady …” 

Ahsoka spoke without turning back around to look at him. “The Stormtroopers I fought - and  _ killed _ …” She pulled in another stuttering breath, “All I saw were my men. My clones, all shooting at-” She cut herself off with another shake of her head and began to pace back to her familiar spot near the window. 

She saw movement out of the corner of her watery eyes as his hand moved to poke at something outside of the camera’s range. His projection became smaller, more life sized, as a result. The tracker followed Maul’s movements, as his projection stood and walked over to her.

“Had I known you still held onto those nightmares I may have been more understanding these past few years. Have you never released the anger, the sadness you felt from that night?  _ Please _ Ahsoka, explain yourself to me.” When she met his eyes, they were wide and pleading. The ever angry mask he wore in his tattoos no longer disturbed her, as she saw what lay beneath it all. She turned her face to the window, shivering at his sincerity.

“I prefer to only discuss it with people who were there.” Her voice was distant. It had been so long since she last heard that voice.

“Which leaves myself, and that clone you saved, doesn’t it?” Maul’s voice held no contempt, only understanding. When she didn’t respond, his projection took a step closer to her and leaned in slightly. “That does not offer many outlets… you cannot survive by keeping these things locked away.”

Ahsoka sucked in a breath and returned her arms to her sides, forcing her muscles to relax even though her heart rate was still unstable. “It was…” She didn’t know how to describe it. The only person she had ever broached the subject with was Rex, and even then it was only immediately after they took their leave off that moon. A thought came to her. It was a risk, but it would be the best way to convey her thoughts to him.

“Maul, you had a brother, right?”

His Force signature became guarded, as if on instinct, before slowly relaxing when logic took over. He spoke slowly. “… Yes?”

“I… I heard from the Nightbrothers that it was the strongest bond you had ever shared with another living being.” 

“Yes.”

Maul’s answer was immediate, but his voice was solemn and heavy. Ahsoka took another deep breath and turned to face his projection fully. His face was relaxed, but his eyes were distant. 

“Imagine for a moment, as if your brother stood by your side one minute, ready to conquer the galaxy with you - then tried to hold you down and slit your throat in the time between blinks.” Another tear managed to escape her eye and roll down her cheek. “What would you have done?”

“I would have fought for my life…”

“Even against him? Even if it meant his death?”

“Yes.”

She barely spoke above a whisper. “Do you really believe that?”

He had no response.

“That was my dilemma, Maul. My closest friend, Rex… He was practically my brother.”

“You mentioned him that night.” He gave a slight nod of understanding as if piecing together her actions on the Star Destroyer.

“Yes, the one I saved. He thought he could fight - could  _ kill _ \- his brothers as well, but when I removed his mask I saw the truth, Maul. He had...” She paused to let out a short, hiccuping sob. “He had too much heart in him to do such a thing. He couldn’t turn around and murder people,  _ our family _ , who had no control over their actions.” 

Ahsoka lip trembled as she spoke, and she didn’t trust herself to continue. She shut her jaw with a click as her arms reached up once more to hug her chest and grip at her biceps. If her arms had been uncovered, they would be scratched and bruised from her vice grip. Her hands slid up and down, as if she were attempting to warm herself. None of it felt like conscious movement to her. Under all her emotions sat self-hatred and embarrassment at this outburst - this weakness. Even as Maul spoke, she couldn't look at him. 

“I am sorry for abandoning you on that ship. It would have carried all three of us -”

It felt as if a small piece of  _ something _ inside of her break open to reveal itself. She cut him off, unintentionally harsh, “No! - No, Maul. I should have let you work with me to stop them, We should have worked together to escape -”

He recognized her spiral and attempted to cut in. “Ahsoka, you had no reason to trust me -”

“I should have taken your hand on Mandalore.”

Maul was silent at her admission. She was too far gone to notice. Ahsoka stood there, sobbing and scratching at her arms. Her voice came out sharp and uneven between cries. “I’m still not certain if your visions ever came true, Maul. Everything suggests that they did.” She stopped to give a self-deprecating laugh and wipe at her eyes with her wrist, just a bit too hard. “If I had joined you…”

He reached out to her, as her voice disappeared into silent, open mouthed sobs. In his incorporeal state, the motion was futile, so he sent her a calming but stern wave through the Force. 

“You once said you don’t like to dwell on speculation.” The fire in his voice halted her breathing, making it catch somewhere in her throat. “So stop. Just live in the moment.” His palm was open to her, and she returned the motion on instinct. The blue particles of his projection scattered around as her fingers passed through him, and reformed with a quiet buzz. They both glanced down at the merged forms of their hands. The dance of the particles jumping across her knuckles distracted her just long enough to return her breathing to a reasonable level.

“On Corellia… The Force nearly left me. It’s been nearly a decade since I last used it to such a degree. It felt like I was using something so integral to  _ me _ , something I  _ know _ , all wrong. Until I… I reached into that dark part of myself Maul. I used my anger to kill.” She stopped to firmly push away the lump in her throat and bring strength back into her voice.. “I don’t fear that side of myself, I have come to terms with its existence, but I don’t want to use it. It felt wrong.”

“That sounds to me like you  _ do _ fear it, to some extent. Any reticence to let yourself achieve your full potential is out of fear.” She grimaced at his words slightly, but allowed him to continue.

“As I have said in the past, My Lady, these emotions are part of you - they make you the warrior you are. You may have once been told to hide them, but you are not a Jedi and you were never meant to be. No, you were meant to be something  _ more _ \- so why stick to their archaic teachings?” She met his eyes. The creases around them were full of admiration and promise. “What you are feeling is chaotic and confusing, but it does not have to be that way. You can  _ use _ this passion. We are new people, reformed, Ahsoka. Whether you allow yourself to change or not depends entirely on the steps you take.”

Her hand continued to play upon his projection’s glowing fingers. The lingering tightness in her chest ached as she spoke. “I fear that I will not like the person I become.”

“Did you fear what you might become when you used your emotions to break down that temple wall? Or when you used it to subdue me all those months ago?” His voice became low and heady, but it sent an oddly calming sensation through her. She shook her head ever so slightly, hyper aware of the way her lekku swayed at her sides. “No, because you trusted your emotions then. Trust me now, Ahsoka. I can help you understand.”

She was at a loss. She had no ship, and nowhere to turn except to go right back into the fray of the rebellion. Bail and Mothma were the last people she wanted to think about right now. Deep down, she was grateful to have a fellow Force-wielder to discuss these things with, even if the way he spoke felt like sacrilege to her. More than anything else, she just wanted to rest.

“I don’t want to talk like this over the com, Maul.”

“Then come to me, My Lady.”

###  Dathomir, Upper Orbit

The recording device felt heavy in her hand. Ahsoka poked her thumb at the button, debating on how she would reform the cacophony in her brain into proper words. She couldn’t tell if recording these messages to Rex even brought her peace any more. A light beep echoed in the cockpit as she pressed down.

“Alpha… I hope this actually gets to you, as usual. Whatever corner of the galaxy you’re in must have really awful service, considering I haven't gotten anything back from you since - well, I can't remember.” Her thumb lifted to pause the recording as she sighed for a moment. It was hard to keep her voice positive. “Things have been slow, you may have heard some of what I’m up to. Hopefully not… Things are starting to come together, the roots we set are finally growing branches. When the time is right, we will weave them together.”

Her months of hiding were not all bad. While she kept her low profile, Saw had actually taken up some of her mantle and recruited a few of his own cells to the cause. Out of the groups she had laid the groundwork for, many were thriving and strong. The material shipments between herself and Maul continued under Saw’s supervision, while she dealt the credits out - and with how she and Maul now got along, hiding for long periods of time was certainly no problem. It was her internal thoughts that made everything hard now.

“But… on a personal level I’m not sure how much more I can take. It all came crashing down today.” The distant voice she hated was back once more, but it was better than the choked and sobbing alternative which threatened to rear its ugly head. “Their helmets are so different but all I see are orange and white paint on pikes. Rex… I feel lost.” 

Ahsoka paused, realizing belatedly that she had forgotten to use his nickname at the end. Something she would have to edit out later. She took a stuttering breath and clicked off the recording, stuffing it harshly back in her bag. Her hand touched a datapad she had “borrowed” from Vos’ collection, and decided to make good on her intent so many months ago on Dathomir. Perhaps if she could learn about what Maul was  _ not _ , she could understand more of who he was. 

She knew so little about his life prior to their meeting on Mandalore - only what the archives had explained. Every bit of information from the Jedi could only be trusted as a half-truth, obfuscated by their biases. Obi-wan had been a bit more candid with his knowledge of the man, but even still, she felt that something was missing. There would be nothing of Maul’s history on the Imperial holonet, she was certain. Yet there was bound to be some basic historical information about his homeworld. 

The fancy ship Vos had given her (only after a stern request from his boss) used some of the most advanced navicomputers she had ever seen, but she still set the landing sequence with a bit of apprehension. As the ship did its job alone, she opened the datapad. Reading, it turned out, was a good way to pass the long and boring descent process through the atmosphere. Dathomir grew ever larger in the windows as she read about that which laid before her.

As expected, there was no mention of Maul, though he was arguably more notable than any of the important names that came up. She thought that the passing mention of a bounty hunter from the planet was in reference to him, though it turned out to be about Ventress instead. There was nothing of her Sith past, or of the apprentice she trained. The omissions were more telling than anything else.

The navicomputers’ landing of the ship was so smooth and uneventful that she barely even noticed the halt in movement. Gathering herself to leave the ship on the other hand, seemed impossible. Ahsoka sat, staring out onto the quiet vista of Shattered Ridge, with the village like a bright beacon above her. The datapad in her hand went to sleep on its own in the time it took her to draw her eyes away from the village’s inviting lights. It was only a short walk up the path from her landing spot to Maul’s garrison at the edge of town, yet she almost wanted to amble through the cold night for a while before going to him.

She felt his presence. It was closer than she would have expected this late at night - he must have come out to greet her. She sent out a wisp of acknowledgement through the Force, to let him know she was present. He sent one back and it felt like a sigh of relief.

Ahsoka packed her things and left the unfamiliar cockpit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keying a bit off of Maul’s interactions with Ezra in Rebels as a means of seeing how he tries to ah…. Teach? Recruit? people after losing Savage. Some things about their relationship may have become more evident here. Angsty stuff incoming.
> 
> Aaaand again, I’m basing Ahsoka’s trauma response off of my own just cause it’s what I know. What do we do in this house? *crowd chanting* We bury that shit!
> 
> I’ll try to respond to any comments within the first 24-48 hours of posting, then I’ll be back to focusing on writing. Not sure how long the next one will take, but it will have more smut. :3


	7. Something Closer to Freedom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of smut. Lots of it. It opens with smut and ends with smut, so if you think you can get like... halfway through then put it on hold for later, this ain’t it lol.  
> And uhhhh, more mentally heavy stuff. I don’t recall the specifics of Maul being handed over to Sidious, and I’m too deep in at this point to bother reading up. Just go with it. Pls thx
> 
> Heed the warnings, use your judgement. Not much else to say, everything has become fair game now that we’re two chapters from the end.  
> Take care of yourselves everyone <3

####  10 BBY - 2nd standard month

###  Dathomir, Maul’s quarters

“Maul, we’re not really getting anywhere at this pace.” 

Ahsoka’s voice came out slurred and satisfied as golden morning light filtered in across their bodies. Maul’s shoulder blades moved smoothly under his skin as he rubbed and squeezed her thighs at either side of his face. Her view, and the accompanying actions, were breathtaking - but she had other goals in mind right now.

“I guess I'm making up for some lost time, would you rather I come up there?” He lifted his head to respond and dragged his tongue up her body, stalling at her chest for a gentle suck on the skin of one of her breasts. He met her lips and they kissed for a moment, before she placed her hands on his shoulders to roll them. Switching positions was not always the easiest task on his narrow bed, but with a bit of balance it was possible. Ahsoka hovered over him for a moment, enjoying the tingling feeling his hands sent down her body as they traced her hips. 

“I would rather be down there, actually.” Maul closed his eyes and purred at her words. She ran her lips along his neck, not quite kissing, as her hands made to open up the hatch that kept his prosthetics modest. She pulled him out and stroked lightly to get the internal workings up and active. The ends of her lekku danced across his shoulders and chest as her face made its way down his body. That was one aspect of longer lekku that she had never considered enjoying so much as a youth, they had become so much more sensitive over the years. Maul placed a hand on one, gently capturing the tender tip between his fingers as her lips met his member with a small kiss. His other hand slid along her montrals as she took him into her mouth, circling the head with her tongue. 

His first moan was loud and relieved. While the movements of his palms along her lek and montrals were deeply enticing to her, Ahsoka brought her hands away from his groin to move his arms. He was compliant, allowing her to fold them under his hips, essentially pinning himself to the bed with his own weight. The purring from his chest became louder with each bob of her head, to the point where he was almost growling with every breath.

Maul spoke through gritted teeth between moans. “You will be the death of me one of these days, My Lady.”

“Probably,” Ahsoka took him again and released him with a pop that sent his head reeling back into the cushions. “Not today though, I have too much fun watching you squirm.” She glanced up at him under heavy eyelids. The expanse of his neck shimmered with sweat. Her nails scraped quickly up his metal navel and over his ribs to capture his throat. She didn’t grasp tight, but paired with just a  _ little _ pressure through the Force, Maul began to gasp. His arms obediently stayed in the spot she moved them to, but his hips began to rut sporadically into her face. She shifted her shoulders slightly to accommodate the movement - the position she was in was not the easiest to hold. It was not an issue though; Ahsoka could tell that she wouldn’t need to be there much longer. 

Just as she sensed Maul reaching his peak, she removed all pressure from him - her hand, her mouth, even the Force around his throat all disappeared in an instant. She leaned back, balancing on her knees as she prepared for his immediate retribution. Maul’s head shot up, eyes on fire as his arms immediately untangled and began to squeeze at any expanse of her skin he could reach. 

“You manipulative little - hrn -” Ahsoka captured his lips with her own, silencing him. Her fingers tangled with his, and she forced them up above his head as her tongue swirled with his. Now that he was warm and wet from her mouth, taking his length was easy. Ahsoka pulled away and sat her full weight upon him, gasping as the mechanics shifted and twitched under their silicone casing within her. Their heads fell together once more at the sensation.

“As I recall...” She spoke between gasps, bouncing her hips to his in a fast rhythm. “Women have final say on all things sexual on Dathomir. Is that alright with you,  _ My Lord?” _

Maul growled out an incoherent response as an orgasm tore through him. She had been with him enough to know that if she kept moving, he could keep at it for a few more rounds at least - another benefit of his unique lower half. His wrists strained against her grip in the pillows as his back arched sharply, but in this state he was nowhere near strong enough to force his arms back down. She reached out to his frayed mind in the Force, soothing and praising and  _ begging _ while he came down from the high. The whole time she never once let up speed, keeping the same frenzied pace of her hips.

“That’s it Maul -”

“Tell me what you want, My Lady. Tell me and it’s yours.” The whining pitch of his voice was music to her montrals. She released his hands and met his eyes.

“Shut up and fuck me.”

Maul wasted no time in reaching out for her, rubbing and grasping at the soft skin of her backside. Ahsoka’s knees slid along the blankets as his legs bent up and put her off balance. He tilted his hips and pushed a large hand to her lower back, altering their angle just enough that he could hit deeper within her. 

He prodded at her mind through the Force, then pulled away, before prodding once more. His lack of rhythm was deliberate - the patterns between his hips and mind were offset just enough that she couldn't follow either. Ahsoka shouted profanities into the pillow beside his horns that she didn’t even realize she knew. He slammed into her, physically and mentally, until her own orgasm gripped her and she devolved into wordless cries.

It was a brief moment of her twitching around him before his second orgasm rolled in, fast and regrettably weak. Once Ahsoka opened her eyes, she noted that he appeared satisfied regardless. His body relaxed below her, and she followed suit. One of her lekku and a breast were squished in a slightly uncomfortable position between them, but she couldn’t find the energy within her to care. There was one thing at the back of her mind though, something he said mere minutes ago. It played over in her head like a broken recorder.

_ I'm making up for some lost time. _

Her breath was hot on his neck as he stared up at the ceiling, unseeing and content. She watched the creases of his face melt away as he fell into a light slumber, even as the morning light made the room ever brighter. Thinking back on those heavy words gripped her heart, but now was not the time for it. She traced the line of his bicep with a finger. It was slack and pliable in his languid state. In that moment, she felt like the only person in the galaxy who knew he wasn’t all hard lines and sharp edges. It only made her ache more.

###  Dathomir, Shattered Ridge village

In the few weeks Ahsoka had stayed on Dathomir, nothing much had happened. While she came to the planet initially to seek comfort, it now just made tactical sense to stick around until the coaxium haul showed up. She, of course, couldn’t complain that it had taken yet another month to complete the transaction - especially considering she had forgotten about the whole ordeal in the first place. She was in good company, that was what mattered.

Ahsoka shook her head to clear her thoughts, and instead focused intently on the village below her. Maul’s balcony was small, but it had a fantastic view of the mountainous horizon. The Nightbrothers below went about their routines, some hanging around for idle chat, others teaching young ones proper fighting stances. The sharp whirs and scrapes of a blacksmith were white noise behind the ambience of their lives. It made her happy to see this small town thriving in such a plagued galaxy.

She watched a small band of young Nightbrothers tussling along the road, kicking a ball to one another. They were all too young to bear the signature tattoos of their clan. Their playful laughter echoed up to her, until one fell, busting up his arm fairly badly. Ahsoka leaned over the balcony on instinct, as if she could help the child from her vantage point, but there was no need. The rest of the children were at his side, there to assist and comfort immediately. It warmed her heart to see them, but her mind couldn’t help but wander to the man in the room behind her.

Maul’s holoprojector could be heard through the thick wooden door at her back. He never raised his voice to whoever was on the other end, but she made out the distinct noise of his legs, as well as the hum of his lightsaber igniting. She couldn’t make out any words, but if his Force signature was anything to go by, whoever he was talking to was not long for this world. 

A few more seconds passed, and she heard the com cut along with a light huff of cynical laughter as he stepped away from his projector and toward the doorway. He walked out onto the balcony and wordlessly began rubbing at Ahsoka’s shoulders, more to release his own tension than any of hers. It felt good regardless. “What was that all about?”

Maul let out a noise somewhere between a growl and a sigh. “You won't be getting the coaxium anytime soon. Crimson Dawn has some failings to answer for first.” He rubbed his thumbs along her spine hard, pinching a nerve between her shoulder blades.

She pulled forward, away from his hands. “Ow - Maul!” She turned to find him with his hands up, palms forward, looking honestly apologetic but still angry. Ahsoka knew none of it was intentionally directed at her, but made up her mind to assuage him somewhat. She had been looking for an opportunity to get him in a foul mood anyway, to test out something of a theory. 

“There’s not enough room on this damn balcony.” She motioned a thumb up to the peak of the mountain, where the crumbling wall of a large arena watched over the village. “Why don’t we hit two convors with one stone - let’s talk about it and make good on that old promise we had?”

“Old promise?” 

“The sparring session you wanted.”

“Ah.” Maul took a second to remember before nodding in understanding. He stepped out of her way as she returned to his office to gather her coat. His Force radiated annoyance as she walked past him, but also intrigue and calculation. Whatever had just transpired had his brain working overtime.

The trek up to the top of the mountain was not a long one, but it was  _ cold _ . Ahsoka mentally cursed Maul for being a Zabrak, and thus running naturally hot. His body was what kept her warm most nights, but it wasn’t like they could walk up the steep cliffs while intertwined. Maul stood behind her as she donned the heavy rancor-leather coat, running a hand up her back to situate it properly on her shoulders. He placed a light kiss to one of her lekku just before they walked out of the building and into public view.

Ahsoka didn’t mind that he was only ever affectionate when they were alone - it was more her speed anyway. In hindsight, it made sense to her that he would want to keep the relationship between them, and them alone. Not only were they both high-profile Imperial targets, but he had little to no connection with the other Nightbrothers of the town. From his point of view, she imagined it made little sense to bother them with his personal life.

Right before they began their ascent up the worn stairs, the group of children from earlier ran past. Ahsoka noted that the one who had fallen was properly patched up, and happily cheering along with the rest. One ran a tight loop around she and Maul, and hopped onto the lowest step while getting into a rudimentary fighting stance. Ahsoka playfully matched the pose and blocked a few soft hits while laughing along with them, before the whole group moved on through the village. She watched them go with a dopey smile plastered onto her cheeks. They reminded her of younglings in the Jedi courtyards.

Maul’s mood soured even more.

Ahsoka rolled her eyes as his Force signature washed over her and started ascending the staircase, trusting he would follow. The arena above them - she had learned from her companions around the village - was rarely used now that the Nightsisters were no longer around. The elders kept lanterns lit along the path, but everything else around them was otherwise untouched. Thick drifts of snow crunched beneath every step, the thin layer of ice over them was blinding if she looked at them wrong. 

The center of the arena was, thankfully, free of snow. The black basalt of the ground remained warm thanks to the light of Dathomir’s sun - Ahsoka reveled in the change of temperature, both physically and through the Force. The whole mountaintop radiated a deep and heady power that felt intoxicating in the moment. Maul must have noticed her change in demeanor - he walked past her with a caress to her backside and a smirk.

“Priorities, My Lady.” He watched her over his shoulder, as Ahsoka made a show of taking off her coat and tossing it to the side. The ground may have been warm, but it did nothing to stop the chill that ran up her arms once they hit the air. She ignored the involuntary shiver her body made, and reached for her lightsabers.

Maul took position, grabbing the staff from his hip and igniting it in a fluid motion. Ahsoka met his stance with one saber in defence position, the other in offence. A twinkle of music reached them from the village below, but it was drowned out by the sound of their misty breathing.

He moved first, sweeping low and wide. Ahsoka parried, using the attraction between their plasma blades to force the left side of his saber ever so slightly closer to her, while his right became unprotected. Her left arm came up for a swipe, forcing him to break the connection with her first saber, and block the blow.

Maul straightened up, leaning back slightly to regain some footing. Before Ahsoka could strike out a third time, he twisted his arms to put the blade into a powerful spin - forcing her back on instinct. The spin was nothing like the motorized moves of the Inquisitors, Maul’s hands were balanced and dexterous on his lightsaber’s hilt. If she were to stab through the defence now, it would toss her sabers right out of her hands.

She took their moment of separation to poke him a bit. “So what got you so heated back there?”

“We’re a little too preoccupied for this, hmm?” His cheek twitched up with a small smile. Ahsoka matched it with a grin of her own and began stalking around to look for an opening.

“Doesn’t hurt to multi-task! If we’re not doing this, then your head’s between my legs and I don’t get any words out of you at all.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Maul’s eyes were wide and hungry, watching her as they circled one another. 

Ahsoka lunged at him, flipping fully over his swipe of retaliation. She landed on her hands and used the momentum to flip back to her feet, before striking out at Maul’s back. He twisted at the ribs to block her blow, putting them back into another stalemate. She smiled sweetly at him. “Then tell me what’s up.”

Breathing heavily, Maul broke off their lock and aimed a blow at her montrals as he spoke. “Dryden Vos has died.”

“Good riddance if you ask me.” She jumped back from a swipe aimed at her hips. Maul laughed harshly while blocking her following slice.

“Hmm.  _ That _ is nothing I cannot deal with. It is Qi’ra’s insurrection that I am focused on.”

“She killed him?” Ahsoka ducked under another high swipe.

“Possibly. Whatever she told me was far from the truth, that much I could tell.” Maul paused to let her regain some balance, before blocking a scissoring lash from her sabers. “She will be coming to Dathomir, then I will learn what really conspired.”

“You think she might run?”

“She’s not that  _ stupid _ . Vos was, but I’m sure you would agree that -” Maul paused as he quickly moved his head out of the way of a stab. “ - Qi’ra is far from idiotic. Just defiant. She has to learn that I won’t tolerate insubordination, just as her predecessor did.”

“So you plan to punish her?” Maul pushed one end of his saber so quickly at her face that she had no choice but to block with both of her own. The wet mist of her breath sizzled against the plasma.

He held their position, keeping the pressure on her steady and unwavering. “No, no. I still need a public face for Crimson Dawn. I plan to  _ intimidate _ .”

“And… you’re certain that your intimidation won’t turn dark?”

He rolled his eyes at her implications. “I can control myself.”

“Debatable.”

Maul growled with a smile, and feigned another attack. As she stepped forward to block it, he used their position to slide behind her and wrap an arm around her waist. This wasn’t her goal for their training, but she allowed the distraction for a moment. Their lightsabers stilled in place as he purred into the back of her montrals. “When we have argued in the past, have I ever gotten violent?”

The bait was tempting, but Ahsoka flipped her sabers backwards and forced him away with a jab. Maul jumped back with a skid of his metal feet. She spun to look at him. “You really want me to answer that?”

“Other than Mandalore.”

“See, the problem here is that you don’t actually intimidate me.” She shook her lightsaber at him, as if emphasizing her point, while they returned to circling one another. Maul had a lazy smile on his face, but she saw something beneath the mask. A slight tick. “You’re making false equivalencies.”

“Then why worry over my anger if it does not affect you?”

Ahsoka’s eye twitched slightly. That mindset was callous, even by his standards. “I worry about those you turn it on to. Those kids did nothing to you, why get angry at them?”

Her allegation gave him pause. “ _ Anger _ is not how I would describe that-”

“Oh come on. The Force radiates off of you like a stench when you’re mad.” He was cracking. Over the years it had become ever more clear to her that the angry outbursts were his only form of coping. It was true, she had never borne the brunt of that anger, not since Mandalore - and even then, that was a unique situation. His insistence that she channel her emotions through the Force had helped click everything into place in her mind. “It happens quite a bit on Dathomir. What is it about your people that you hate, Maul?” 

Maul let out a low growl and lunged at her. ‘ _ That’s right. Let it out in the only way you know how,’ _ she thought, as he rushed forward full tilt. Some part of her felt wrong for manipulating his emotions this way, but if she could weather his attacks long enough, she may get more clarity from him directly.

His blows came fast and heavy. Ahsoka remained on the defensive as he moved them around the arena with his strikes. She kept it up as long as she could, but an unexpected kick to her gut sent her stumbling back. It was light, intended not to harm, only to move her farther back. Surprise alone threw her out of sync. He took her moment of confusion to double down on his attack, and she had to raise her voice over the sharp, electric sounds of their weapons hitting one another. 

“You feel everything so powerfully, Maul. You allow your emotions to come through your actions, but they overtake your mind. You’re doing it now and refusing to  _ talk.” _

She was startled yet again as a smooth stone wall touched the back of her headtail. He had cornered her. With a final swipe, Maul brought his blade to hover by her throat, while she angled an arm down so the tip of her own nearly met his jugular. He still held the clear advantage - a single flick of his wrist could have cut her down. Had this been a real fight, she would not have time to thrust her saber through his neck before he sliced hers open. Her words were rushed but strong as her chest heaved beneath the heat of his blade

“You have so much anger in you, all you know is how to use it.  _ You tell me to use it _ . But now you need to learn to  _ let it go _ .” Anger was all he had for years, all he knew - Ahsoka had to bring him out of this self imposed darkness. He had said himself, she was his way of making up for lost time, making up for his lost humanity. She felt tears well up in her eyes as she pleaded with him.

”Speak your pain into existence but let it fade from your mind. A fight here and there lets out the immediate steam, but the waters still boil. You can wrap a festering wound all you’d like, but it will never heal if you keep pressing it. You tell me to open up to my emotions? I tell you to  _ release _ yours.” 

“You let things fester just as much -” The timbre of his voice was like a knife to the heart, but she cut him off before he could push any farther. 

“In my own way I do, but we could talk about hypocrisy forever.  _ Neither _ of us are doing this right.” She shook her head and a tear fell away from where it had rolled to her chin, only to vaporize on the fiery blade still at her neck. The pleading in her voice had turned back into stone resolve.

He spoke quietly. “At least my actions are not passive.”

“That doesn't make them healthy.”

They stared at one another, both having said their piece, and disengaged their sabers simultaneously. Maul stared deep into her watery eyes as a shadow of distress passed over his face. The mask was finally coming off. Ahsoka didn’t blink as he spoke.

“Let me gather myself. I will speak, as you asked. I owe that much to you. But give me time.” 

Ahsoka nodded along with his words. She clipped her sabers to her hips and grasped his hand loosely. Maul mirrored her movement, sitting as she did. Her voice was suddenly and inexplicably weak. “Thank you...” 

They faced one another. Maul brought her hands up to his mouth for a kiss to her knuckles. His eyes were distant as he held her there, loosely. They stayed like that for a while, sharing the silence and the warm strain of their muscles. 

###  Dathomir, Shattered Ridge arena temple

The decision to move into the arena’s temple went unspoken between them. The noon time sunlight was a harsh indicator of the summer to come, and had heated the black stone beneath them to an uncomfortable temperature. Ahsoka would have pushed to continue their conversation now that they were in the relative privacy of the old sanctuary, but Maul had other plans.

“You’re hiding yourself from me - in my own neck, no less!” Ahsoka lifted her head and laughed as his breath tickled under her right lek.

“What can I say, My Lady…” He grinned against her neck and the slick line of his teeth on her skin sent a shiver down her spine, “Am I not allowed this simple comfort?”

“No need to stop. Do what you have to … ah -”

One of his hands snaked up her ribs to caress her other lek. Maul chuckled against her as she jumped under his touch. “Tsk - Ahsoka, you’re already losing yourself.”

“This is for your benefit, just ignore me and keep talking. Speak, Maul.” 

He hummed a short note along her shoulder, breathing her in. Ahsoka vaguely felt the hand by her hip, which kept him balanced over her, flex as he thought. The stone dais she sat upon was cold, and she wished he would move the hand over just enough to warm her; but he had to go at his own pace. She pushed him enough already today.

“I was taken away from everything here, and yet it is the only place I truly find comfort. It reminds me of the few happinesses I have ever been allowed - now more than ever thanks to you.” The hand on her lek trailed up and down. “Perhaps staying in this village is like letting the wound fester, but it is all that I have.”

“Maul-”

“Don’t pity me now that you’ve dragged these words from my mouth.” He bit lightly on her neck, a promise for later. She sucked in a short breath through her teeth, but was otherwise silent. He kissed the spot and resumed talking.

“I do not connect with the younger generation by culture, the one before them only knows me by blood. The elders resent me for how my Mother preferred me, though they do not know that her  _ favoritism _ resulted in my servitude.”

He stilled for a moment, and she could feel the thin lashes of his eyes tickle the back of her lek. Ahsoka ached to see his face, to trace his tattoos. “My brother Savage … he was the one who pulled me from my Hell.”

When he didn’t continue, she offered a tentative remark. “I read of his actions in the Jedi archives once.”

“Mhm…” He nodded and his horns brushed the side of her headtail. His whisper tickled the sensitive skin of her neck. “They were not by his own will. Savage had vague memories of who he was before he was moulded into the  _ monster _ the galaxy knew him as. He and I were one in the same…”

Maul rested his chin on her shoulder with a sigh, kisses forgotten for a moment. “We created something out of our own understanding; incorporating his Nightbrother heritage with my adopted Mandalorian mindset. It was good, for a time. It could have been any planet, Mandalore just happened to fall into our lap and gave us every opportunity needed to oppose Sidious before he became too strong.” 

Ahsoka wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling his torso closer to her own. His arms circled her waist in response. “The dream of destroying my former master was nearly lost to me, between Savage’s death, and then my Mother’s.”

“Nearly…?”

He turned his face away from her shoulder, into her neck once more. She could feel a small smile on his lips. “You rekindled it, however briefly, on Mandalore. Perhaps a bit now as well - with the work between your Alliance and the Dawn.”

Ahsoka stayed quiet. She played with the collar of his tunic at the back of his neck, wondering if he would be willing to do more than just facilitate her smuggling operations. He could be a valuable asset to her cause, but now was not the time for that train of thought.

“You understand now, why I do not let these feelings go? If I do not remember him, who will?”

Her heart clenched at the anguish in his voice. “You don’t have to forget, you just have to find peace.”

“Have you found your peace with the lost Jedi?”

“I’m still trying, just like you.”

He pulled back only so far as to meet her eyes, before leaning in to capture her lips. She relaxed beneath him, and became pliable under his touch. They mingled in the Force, their minds echoing one another’s heart break, even as the kiss turned passionate. His hands moved up and down her thighs rhythmically, gently pulling to bend her hips closer to his. 

She laid back instinctively and took his hands in hers, to move them to her chest. As he kneaded her breasts through her tunic, Ahsoka ran a hand up his arms and over his shoulders, keeping him close. Her boots caught on the metal of his calves as she hooked her legs around his. The fabric of her pants was becoming increasingly annoying. Maul broke their kiss for a moment when she made a small noise of exasperation. When she looked into his eyes, she saw only determination.

“How far do you want to take this?” His voice was nothing more than a murmur, and she responded in kind. 

“I’ll follow your lead.”

Maul purred at her words, recapturing her lips with his own. His hands slid down to her legs, moving them both to one side of his hips and pulling down her leggings just enough to allow him access. She moaned around his tongue as two gloved fingers began to circle her entrance, knowing exactly how to move to prepare her. His other hand worked his own pants open, and pulled out his prosthetic to get the metal to a comfortable temperature. Once Ahsoka began to grasp at the back of his head desperately, he moved his hips forward to enter her.

“You brought me here to unfold my mind, allow me to do the same.” He moved his mouth to quietly growl into her montrals as she started up the rhythm of their hips. “Do you know what this place was meant for My Lady? The arena was where the Nightsisters picked their mates, but this temple is where they  _ bred _ with them.” 

His hips snapped forward so he was buried to the hilt. Ahsoka moaned long and sweet as she pulsed around him. “Is that something you want from me? Is that what you desire? Do tell, Ahsoka, My  _ Darling _ .” 

The stable part of her mind noted a twinge of sadness to his taunts. She learned long ago not to take the words spoken in passion as truth - it wasn’t like they could make good on that particular promise anyway - but his soul was bare to her in this moment. It was just as he did with his anger. Maul was projecting this lost part of himself onto her, a desire for family, kinship, perhaps even something so simple as companionship.

Her mouth almost began to form words, but they devolved into stutters as he pulled out, then entered her fully once more. Maul’s hand returned to its ministrations between them, circling her clit as they moved in tandem.

Their pace was rhythmic and hard. The sound of her skin slapping against the flat metal of his pelvis - which was wet with her fluids alone - was deliciously erotic to her, and only made to muddle her mind even more. Ahsoka grasped the back of his head and pulled him forward to look at her. She watched him through half-lidded eyes, and forced the words out. “Are you sure it’s not what  _ you  _ want maul? To have someone? You have me, My Lord.” 

Maul didn’t respond. He held her gaze while reaching away from her clit, to caress her chin. Ahsoka leaned up and into his touch, and took his wet fingers into her mouth with a moan. His breath came out haggard as he watched her. She rubbed the base of his backmost horn, and sucked on his glove as he pounded into her.

His release was long and drawn out. She could feel the metal within her twitch, and as he crushed his hips to hers, she felt her own release come crashing down. Ahsoka bit down on his leather-wrapped fingers as she came, though it did little to stifle the harsh scream she let out. Maul’s hand at her chin moved back to caressing her lek once more as she twitched and moaned in the afterglow, and his eyes practically sparkled as he looked at her.

“Ahsoka, you are enough. You are always enough”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :P
> 
> Next chapter is rough. We’ll get there when we get there, not sure what my schedule will allow at the moment, with near-full-time work being put back into the mix.  
> I’ve got a comic to go alongside this once it’s finished, then after all that is posted, I’ll be putting up b-sides that are just smut. Nothin but smut. Just cause it’s fun to write and there’s a lot of space to play around in this little timeline I’ve laid out.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me folks! Love u~


	8. Penumbral Detox

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Running away again, Lady Tano?_

####  10 BBY - 7th standard month

###  Dantooine, Rebel Alliance Base

Bail Organa. Ever calm and collected. Ahsoka could not think of a single person within the rebellion she trusted more; though, at this moment her mind was torn. 

“Ahsoka, it’s not just that we don’t want to work through Saw or your secretive dealings anymore - well, Mon Mothma doesn’t…” Bail scratched his short beard, seeming abashed at his associate. “But, while I think any supplies are good supplies, you cannot deny that we are in better standing now, than we were two years ago. We have the resources to be self-sufficient. It makes no sense to keep spending all these credits. You’ve seen the numbers.”

“I should be able to negotiate lower rates.”

“That won’t help with Mothma’s distrust of Gererra or your suppliers.” He sighed, looking older than his age for a moment. “The way I see it Ahsoka, is that the longer we keep up the game, the more likely they are to notice us. Our plans were always to keep things small until the time was right. We are not there yet - we have to stay small but spread apart.”

Ahsoka crossed her arms over her chest and nodded in thought. He was right - the whole idea of this alliance was to play the long game. There really was no need, on a grand scale, to keep Crimson Dawn in their cards. She wondered how Maul would take the news. Their agreements were not exactly profitable - Qi’ra had actually attempted to cut the ties in the months since she took over, as she was annoyed with the effort to payoff ratio Ahsoka offered the Dawn. Maul gave push back each and every time she brought it up, his defense being that it was all an underhanded political move on his part. That had put Ahsoka on edge. Doing what was morally right was one thing, doing it to play politics was another. For someone so steeped in the shadows of the galaxy, she had hoped he would get her motives to remain out of the political eye - Maul was so close to understanding, but still so far.

“Call up Saw yourself - whatever grievances Mon Mothma has with him, doesn't involve me. I’ll deal with my contacts and slow the credit outflow.” She stared off into the middle distance as she talked, still in thought. 

When she glanced up, Bail looked resolute, if not a little apologetic. A courier suddenly hurried up to his side, taking his attention and halting any chance of continuing the conversation. They nodded quickly to each other in parting as she left. While weaving through dusty crowds of pilots and astromechs to her temporary quarters, she pulled out the long distance comlink she got from Qi’ra. Ahsoka wasn’t quite interested in discussing this with Maul directly just yet.

The call took a while to connect - between encryption and the lightyears between them, this was standard. She sat on a small cot, meditating lightly as the small com in her hand worked out the signal.

The device finally beeped. “Madame Tano?”

“Qi’ra, I have some news that you’ll be  _ ecstatic _ to hear.” Ahsoka sighed, rubbing the tension lines on her forehead. The woman on the other end remained quiet and intrigued as Ahsoka searched for the right words. “My… associates, have decided to outsource our shipments elsewhere in the galaxy - we won’t be buying any more of your munitions or ships, or anything really.”

There was a long pause on Qi’ra’s end. When she did speak, she sounded simultaneously relieved and apprehensive. “About time. Your altruism has been bleeding us dry madame Tano. How you managed to bargain that tax out of him is beyond belief.”

Ahsoka let out a dry laugh. “So you’ve said. I knew you would be the easy one to talk to.” 

“My Lord won’t be happy about this, I’m sure. He’s taken a liking to you.”

She hummed in agreement. “That’s certainly one way to put it. I’ll spare you Maul’s wrath and tell him myself, but I want to talk to him in person. Tell him to meet me at Home.”

“Care to give a bit more detail…?”

“He’ll know what I mean.”

“Very well.” Qi’ra was skeptical, but Ahsoka trusted her to get the message out. 

Wasting no time with extra chatter, she thanked the other woman and cut the transmission. Ahsoka glanced around her dour room, feeling nothing, before packing her sparse items and walking out to her ship without so much as a word of goodbye to anyone around her.

###  Shili, Ahsoka’s Hideout

“There’s something on your mind…”

Ahsoka hummed a noncommittal response, too docile under his touch to form words. “Mmm…”

“Open for me, Ahsoka.” Maul punctuated his words with a slight twitch of his fingers within her. She grinned into his neck at both the innuendo and the movement.

It felt weird to speak so practically while he had his gloves within her at such a delicious angle, but she relented. “The Alliance wants to slow credit outflow. We’ve got alternate sources set up now.”

Maul purred into her montrals. “Is that so…?”

“Mmm… no need for us to keep roaming the shadows.” Ahsoka opened her eyes to watch him, suddenly apprehensive.

“Indeed...” He, in turn, sent her a calming wave through the Force as he continued to swirl his fingers around within her. 

She let out a pleased sigh at the movement and allowed her eyes to close once more. Her voice was barely audible. “I thought you wouldn’t take it this well…”

“I played my part to help you chip away at Sidious’ ankles. This just sounds like time off.” He grinned and gently nipped at the tip of one montral. She relaxed around his hand more, satisfied that she had finally instilled some sense of morality into his actions over their years of working together. Ahsoka’s orgasm came unexpected, but slow and sweet as he stuck a third digit into her and rubbed at her clit with his thumb. 

He purred as she reveled in her bliss, shielding her from the world around them with his body. Ahsoka shivered as he slid his hand along the side of her ribs, taking special care to feel each and every curve beneath her skin. In that moment she was floating, nowhere near the small couch they currently occupied in her little hideaway home. All she was aware of was her own pleasure and the small kisses he peppered along the skin of her lekku.

As she eventually began to return to her senses, Maul got up, quietly cleaning off his fingers with his mouth. He spoke as he walked toward her kitchen. “Qi’ra will be happy to hear of this turn of events.”

Ahsoka allowed herself one more short moment of peace, before hiking her pants back up and meeting him in the other room. “She already knows, why do you think she was the one to tell you to meet me?”

“Consorting with my officers behind my back?” Maul turned away from her pantry to glance at her with a grin. He grabbed one of the soft nutrition bars she kept solely for his unique digestive needs, and leaned against the counter, raking his eyes posessively along her disheveled figure.

“What’s the look for?” She played coy, sliding up along the counter to meet him.

“You’re beautiful.” Maul responded, barely over a whisper. He reached an arm out to her. “Stay with me…”

Ahsoka leaned over to kiss him, a tease lingering on the edge of her lips. “Still hoping I’ll fall to your side after all these years?” She said it jokingly - with a slight laugh even - but when she pulled away, Maul’s face was serious.

“No. … No, Ahsoka I would never see you change from what you are. Never bring you into the dark side I knew. Never that.” She quickly realized she had misjudged his tone for the night. This was a shift in personality - usually he met her playful demeanor beat for beat. “You said yourself, I have been searching for companionship. Is it wrong for me to have found it in you?”

“Maul…” Her sighed response was endearing and heartbroken. She could see something in his eyes, fighting within himself over whatever he was about to say. He had her clinging to his every word.

“You are the partner I have ached for my dear, stay by me. For good.” He put down the nutrition bar in his hands, moving around to face her fully. “Your rebellion is strong, it will move on its own now, you can rest.”

Ahsoka’s mind lurched to a full stop.

“Wait, Maul… that wasn’t what I was trying to say earlier. I’m saying the rebellion doesn’t need the  _ Crimson Dawn _ as a supplier, not that  _ I _ can freely leave it.”

“You are free to do anything your heart desires, My Lady...” Maul leaned in to kiss her neck. Before she lost sight of his eyes in her peripheral, she caught the shadow of something akin to fear pass over him.

Ahsoka allowed the tender kisses, but her brow scrunched in worry. She spoke against the top of his head, lips brushing his horns ever so slightly. “Yes… but that is asking me to give up too much Maul.” 

He sighed, and straightened back up to his full height before her. He spoke kindly, but a deep, anxious, buried part of her recognized the pained and  _ patronizing _ tone of his voice from Mandalore. “There is no longer any way for the two of us to defeat Sidious Ahsoka, we had our chance and we made all the wrong moves, believe in your rebellion if you must but if they falter, the pain of its demise will destroy you -”

“This… you don’t actually think that. That’s not like you.” 

“We can  _ live, _ Ahsoka,  _ thrive _ ...  _ together _ …” Whatever his voice was telling her, his eyes told different. The fear and despair she thought she had seen moments ago was obvious to her now. He could do nothing to hide it from her.

“Stop, Maul. I…” She closed her eyes and shook her head slightly, before taking his hands in hers. “I don’t want to live like that, I can’t  _ thrive _ knowing that out there, Sidious and his dogs are still stripping the galaxy of every last modicum of hope. At least the Alliance is keeping it alive, and may see him to justice. I can’t just abandon that.”

Maul’s shoulders fell. His words came out fast and anxious. “Ahsoka to stay with this rebellion would mean your death, so long as we act unexpectedly, we may remain hidden from Sidious’ grasp -”

“Maybe the rebellion is what he expects, but I would rather die trying to stop him than live in a galaxy he controls. We cannot  _ live _ like this Maul, wouldn't you want the same?”

Maul’s face folded in on itself in anger - real and visceral, nothing like the masks she saw him wear in the past. “I  _ died _ for him once, I am not going to do so again!”

“Then continue to help me with the Rebellion, and we may all have a better chance to live!”

“… Did you not  _ just _ tell me that you wanted to stop the supply runs?” He stepped back from her, anger replaced with incredulity and confusion for a split second.

Ahsoka’s hands fell out of his own as he stepped away. She walked forward and he only continued to move back. “No- not with supplies - Maul the Alliance could use your skills. Even without the supplies, your connections are valuable -”

“Are you honestly trying to  _ recruit _ me right now?”

This wasn’t right. She wasn’t doing this right. “Would you just listen -”

“No. Ahsoka you listen. This thing between us has grown beyond the rebel needs - yet you still act as if the two are intertwined.” His eyes were wild. The golden flecks of his irises twinkled in the cold, iridescent light around them. “You are still looking for some way to justify this, to rationalize  _ ME _ as being for the greater good, just so you can allow yourself the happiness of being together with another being.”

“Don’t. Maul that’s not what I said.”

“What is it then? You tell me to let go of my past and create a new future, yet stand waist deep in the antiquated principles of a dead religion, and a fledgeling new order of your own design.” His arm flew out to the side, motioning at nothing and everything. “Law, justice, all those morals of the dead Republic that you are trying to return to the galaxy - we’ve gone around this circle before!”

Ahsoka broke. This was not about her, it was never about her. Her voice raised to meet his, against her will. “Don’t you twist my words and turn this back on me damn it. It’s because I care, Maul. There are people out there who need help.  _ Caring _ about others, empathy, they’re not something unique to the Jedi.”

“Have you so much  _ empathy _ for a galaxy that doesn’t care for  _ you _ that you have forgotten to allow it for yourself? Your compassion for the universe around us eclipses your own sense of self.”

“Kindness is not a finite resource -”

“Then why do you refuse to stay?” Ahsoka felt her heart constrict as his voice broke in anguish. “You have been the only person to offer  _ me _ such kindness Ahsoka, why do you insist on ripping yourself from me? The moment I ask something of you - The moment I am no longer beneficial to your  _ personal _ gain, your  _ greater good _ , you abandon me, then dangle a recruitment speech over my head as the only way to keep you in my life!”

“I… I’m not.” Ahsoka’s voice turned weak and small. “Maul. I was perfectly content to continue as we have these past years.

_ “Was _ .”

He practically spit the word back at her. Her head was in chaos. “That… wasn’t what I meant, Maul, I said that poorly.” She gathered her thoughts as he seethed before her, tattoos lining his sharp features in a frightening display. 

“Relationships are not built on possession. I care about you, I do, but what  _ you _ want right now? For me to abandon everything I have built all in the name of living for one another and nothing more?” She looked deep into his eyes, into the pain there, and felt tears well up in her own. “I can’t. Not in the way you want…”

They stood there, in a stalemate and breathing heavily. Ahsoka could feel herself shaking with emotion - she ached to reach out to him. To hold him against her chest and beg for his understanding. To  _ plead _ for him to care about the galaxy outside of his own interests. His signature in the Force was potent, burning and icy all at once, and she shied away from it without even realizing it.

When Maul spoke again, his voice was deadly and thin. Ahsoka’s blood ran cold. “Your Jedi training… refusing personal attachments, even after it all.”

“Don’t _.” _

“You abandoned your Jedi order too, just fine-”

“Don’t you  _ DARE _ .” She outright screamed at him, “Don't use that against me! I was only a child!”

“ _ Never _ in my  _ life _ have I had such choices as you, Tano.” Maul shouted right back at her, a sharp and violent growl of a sound. He stepped even farther back, nearly touching the back wall in an effort to get away from her. “Not as a child, and not now! My entire existence has been for the benefit of  _ others. Even yours _ , ever since you released me from that cell.”

She couldn’t say anything, no words would come. He was not wrong.

“You stand before me, squandering your freedom -” 

It was all too much. 

Ahsoka turned on her heels and walked out of the room so he wouldn't see her tears. Maul’s shout could be heard through the walls that were closing in around her. 

“- As if it were an infinite resource just as your _DAMNED_ _KINDNESS._ ”

He was hurting. She  _ knew _ he was hurting and yet she couldn’t bear to look at him right now. A good  _ Jedi _ would have stayed by his side, made him see how he was being egotistical and possessive, and how it hurt her. A good  _ Jedi _ would have shown him how his mindset continued to hurt him. 

She was not a good Jedi. She was not a Jedi at all, yet she continued to act like one. Playing pretend like a youngling.

Ahsoka had thought she was making headway with him, showing him the way out of his self imposed darkness in her own ways, but she had done it all wrong. Taken it too far. 

She had used him to make her own pain fade, as a means of getting what she needed when she needed it, as something to  _ study _ . 

Ahsoka had allowed him kindness, understanding, all in an effort to cleanse her own guilt. Maul needed a friend, someone to trust. Instead, what she gave him was the smallest piece of driftwood in the vast ocean of space.

She hurt him, and that knowledge was too much for her to bear - but for him it would never be enough.

So she ran.

###  Shili, Lakeside

It was not a long distance between her small house and the local lake. A handful of other homes dotted the shoreline, visible only by the silver lamps in their windows this late at night. It had been hours since she left Maul in her home, and she had every opportunity to go back to him. To return to her home and  _ talk _ . Yet, she sat there at the edge of the water, unmoving, afraid of hurting more.

There was a rattling behind her, repetitive and metallic. 

Distant. Barely audible over the soft roll of the water onto the shore.

The sound of a starship booting up.

When she eventually looked up, Ahsoka saw Maul’s ship exiting the atmosphere, a red arrow in the deep indigo sky, getting smaller with every passing second. Ahsoka opened herself up to the Force, just to test it.

She felt him for only a moment, a fleeting aura of dull anger and regret, before he closed himself to her. The light of his ship’s thrusters was still visible, but it was as if he had disappeared entirely. As if he had never been with her in the first place. Just like all those years ago, on the Star Destroyer, she let him fly off.

Ahsoka brought her knees to her chest, and rested her chin upon them. Her lekku touched the damp grass and twitched at the shock of cold. A small wooden boat floated along the water before her. The late night fisherman at its helm raised a hand in greeting before returning to his quiet work.  
  


Life went on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry.


	9. Grey Matters and New Axioms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> / Star Wars Rebels s2 spoilers
> 
> Thanks for coming along for the ride y’all, the second “part” of just smut has been added to the series list - first chapter will be up right after this! I’ll update that as I am in the mood. The short dialogue-focused comic (that I started before the fic, oof) has been posted to tumblr here: https://aestas-ignis.tumblr.com/post/621310438493274112/

#### 3 BBY

### Malachor

Ezra refused to look at either her, or his master. As Kanan pushed Maul out of his place beside the young padawan, Ahsoka didn’t once let her eyes stray from the Zabrak.

“You gonna be alright with grandpa?” She appreciated the levity in Kanan’s voice. 

“I’ll be fine.” Maul stalked over to her left as she spoke, to the elevator activation mechanism, and used an electric pulse of the Force to make the floor beneath her companions move. The elevator rose with a stutter. 

Ahsoka studied his figure - the tension lines of his shoulders, the power lying beneath his aged skin. She was forcibly neutral in her thoughts. The shock and pain that had come when she felt him through the Force, and _seen_ him walk from the pyramid with Ezra, was gone. Now, the only thing left to her was calculation and observation. That was all she could afford right now. He refused to turn at her scrutiny. Ahsoka was certain that he could feel the rake of her eyes along the tattoos she once knew so well. Their shared silence was palpable, and she itched to quell it.

“After I heard of Crimson Dawn’s leadership change, I assumed you were dead.”

Maul held his breath as she spoke, and turned ever so slightly to look over his shoulder to respond. “By design, Lady Tano.”

“Hm…” She narrowed her eyes at him, but couldn’t help how her lips ticked up in a smile. Now that they were alone, the silken timbre she remembered from so many years ago returned to his voice. 

“Tell me, do you ever regret it?” As he spoke, Maul turned to face her. 

She wouldn’t meet his eyes, and instead opted to watch the Jedi pair become ever smaller above them. “Watch it.” 

“Ever wonder how different things would be?”

“If I had joined you back on Mandalore, the Galaxy would be no different… You know that.” Ahsoka sighed. There were so many moments throughout their past he could be talking about - not only Mandalore, not only the Star Destroyer, but everything after. She stubbornly ignored the painful parts, opting instead to recall what was safe.

He got close to her - practically forcing her to look down into his eyes, which twitched imperceptibly as he responded. “Humor me… My offer still stands”

“And your vision is still flawed.”

His voice dripped with disdain, but still held his signature purr. “Still in denial, My Lady?”

The title sent a shiver up her spine. “Maybe, but what I’m saying, is that if we are going to actually _help_ one another now, it won’t be based on one of your... _visions_.”

“Am I to assume you’re the one calling the shots this time?” His sarcasm was familiar and suffocating to her. Considering how much he was insisting on bringing up their past, Ahsoka couldn’t find it in herself to feel remorse for reopening their old wounds.

“We could use an ally like you Maul…” He turns away from her, back to the elevator. “We would have a better chance at all of this, if we were on the same page, just this once.”

“So you have said…” His voice turned soft, but angry as she pushed. Ahsoka could tell from his aura in the Force that he remembered the night just as clearly as she could. She pushed a little harder.

“It’s like you said. You can’t defeat Vader alone.” He turned to face her as the elevator descended to their level. “Well - neither can I.”

“Such confidence.”

She had to resist the urge to call him a smart ass as they stepped onto the platform together. “We both know, first hand, how much Crimson Dawn and the Alliance have fraternized in the past.”

Ahsoka forced her words to be impersonal - she ached at the thought of the depth of their history, but refused to bring it up now. It had the intended effect, and Maul scoffed at her. “Oh that’s what you call it?” 

She turns away from his rolled eyes and continues under her breath, half to herself. “Honestly, it’s amazing we haven’t run into each other more.”

He spoke up suddenly, as they ascended and the stale air rushed past them. “When Sidious falls, what then, hmm? You expect me to help you revive your _high and mighty_ Jedi order?”

“You know better than anyone else that I don’t want that.” Ahsoka could practically feel how her heart hardened. He still didn’t get it, after what they had both gone through. What they had both become. Her voice turns pleading. “The Sith. The Jedi. Maul, the only way forward I see, is to abandon them both and follow a different philosophy, somewhere in between. Somewhere in the grey.”

Maul’s sudden rise of anger faded, his energy in the Force became docile. Ahsoka barely breathed as she watched the thoughts roll through his mind like waves on rocks. “I think… In another time, that may have been possible…. That may have been my true goal.”

\------------------------ <•> \------------------------

He had hidden it so well. So, _so_ well. 

Mere moments ago Ahsoka had felt familiarity, safety, understanding. They had fought off two Inquisitors in tandem with Kanan. Now he stood before her, blade drawn sharp and fiery. The same blade she watched him fashion from their Inquisitor hunt so many years before. 

She could only hope that the man behind her, bent over in agony and choking silently through his pain, would survive. Ahsoka was certain that if she looked away from the Zabrak to comfort her friend, she would be the next to go. Their history be damned.

Maul’s eyes were crazed. They cut deep into her own and she felt _sick_ as his face twitched into a smirk. He stalked from side to side before her like a caged beast, looking for the weakest bar in his prison. “Why protect him? You said yourself, the axioms of the Jedi are not your own, so why let him train another into their ranks?”

“Kanan is not the first padawan I have come in contact with.” Her eyes dragged from side to side as she watched him. His muscles tensed as she spoke. “My goal has never been to change them-”

Maul’s legs let off a metallic shriek as he leapt at her. They were no longer the graceful prosthetics he had once fashioned for himself, but were now time-worn tools to complement his deadly skills. Their blades hit, the plasma sputtering as it mingled and pulled between them. “No - only to change me.”

Ahsoka snarled as she pushed him back, forcing the older man to stumble ever so slightly. Years ago, she would never have been able to do such a thing with her blades alone, but the man before her was nothing like the one she knew. He was not frail - his following strike for her hip was enough evidence of that - but he was nowhere near as adept as she remembered. Ahsoka blocked the swipe quickly, as well as another toward her shoulders, and centered her mind to reach out to his Force signature with her own. She locked his blade with hers, and his pupils dilated as she prodded at him. Maul all but roared at her for the intrusion, but she refused to let up.

“I won’t let my own misgivings with the Jedi ruin their memories!” She had to shout over the sound of their sabers in stalemate. “He’s a good man with good intentions, first and foremost. I can’t say the same about you!”

He turned their Force connection back at her like a punch. Ahsoka expected anger, but what she got instead was pure, unadulterated _anguish_. She released their blade lock, stumbling back at the weight of his emotions on her mind. Maul didn’t offer her a verbal response; instead, he doubled down with his sabers, spinning his staff so she was forced to the side - away from her protective stance over Kanan. Maul’s eyes left hers for a fraction of a second to lay on the Jedi at their heels. Ahsoka could still feel the young Jedi’s Force - a point of light in the stifling cloud of darkness Maul surrounded her with. Were she not preoccupied with blocking the Zabrak’s blows, she would have sighed in relief that her companion was at least marginally alive, and well enough to move away.

Ahsoka had the height advantage on him now, yet he still managed to rain a series of strikes at her head and neck, each coming quicker than the last. They had not fought like this since Mandalore, and even then his movements had held something of a hesitancy to them - he never intended to kill her at their first meeting, or any subsequent time. The man she fought now had no such hesitation behind his strikes.

“Is the only reason you haven’t killed me after all these years, because I’m not a Jedi?” Ahsoka locked his blade once more, sliding the white of her own down, so their blades were both cutting into the metallic stone beneath them. The sharp screeching reminded her of molten metal on water - it was a fitting match to the currents between them.

Though only a mere foot from her own face, Maul shouted back at her. “I saw _potential_ Ahsoka! We could have both become _better_ than what we came from. That grey philosophy you crave now? I saw it, ages ago, and you _LEFT_. Too afraid to pursue it!”

A sudden and blinding light surrounded them, paired with a dull thundering and a wave of dark Force that was choking in its strength. Their mutual anger in the Force, amplified by the sheer power emanating from the battle station, pushed them apart from one another like two opposed magnets. When her eyes readjusted to the light, she glanced up at the now active top of the pyramid with unease. Maul seemed to need the moment to catch himself as well, but when he spoke again it was with a manic laugh.

“What good does a single, young Jedi Padawan do against the power of Darth Sidious? Admit it to yourself Ahsoka! His _potential_ is wasted among the light - just like yours was!”

Maul backs away from her next strike, stepping just out of range of being sliced between both of her sabers. While the cave around them had blinded her in the moment, she felt the presence at the edge of their cliff stir - Kanan was alive. Now, she was determined to keep the former Sith distracted from that fact. Her movements were fast and intentionally erratic. There was little cadence to her strikes; Maul was forced to watch both of her sabers as she flipped and turned them around his own. She could feel his anger reach a boiling point, and allowed him one low, sweeping blow. Time seemed to still as she corkscrewed over the slice, and Force jumped up the staircase beside them. All the while, Kanan had gathered himself, and now appeared more than ready to finish what Maul started.

The smirk on his lips felt like a stake through the heart, but her distracting fighting did as intended - Maul was entirely unaware of the revived adversary behind him as he looked up at her. His eyes were hers, and hers alone. 

“Running away again, Lady Tano?”

_Again._

_History continued to haunt her_.

\------------------------ <•> \------------------------

He deactivates the weapon held loosely in his hand. The body below him has limbs that stick out at unnatural angles, and a shard of femur has stabbed out through his lean thigh. The broken and bloodied Inquisitor, who hunted him to this planet in the weeks prior, now chokes through the vocoder of his helmet as the saber leaves his chest, and his movements slow. The trail of blood that had led him to the Sith agent now points directly to his ticket off of this hell pit - he sees a small, Imperial ship in the distance. There was some sense of irony here, between him and his hunter. It would be sweet on his tongue, if not for everything bitter behind him.

Maul cannot feel her. Not through the cloud that was Darth Vader. He senses their ongoing battle, but there is nothing he recognized as the bright, strong Force of Ahsoka Tano. 

As he climbs the rubble to the TIE model fighter, he breathes in the stale air. It was copper to his throat, stained with the blood of the statues around him. Their cold, grey eyes watch his movements with ardor. Their mouths scream taunts and jeers as if they wished he were dead and broken on the ground as well. Ancient Jedi and Sith alike.

The moment Maul sits in the lone pilot seat, he feels it. The spire of the pyramid before him collapses in on itself, and in a heartbeat of a moment, Ahsoka’s Force reaches him. 

She covers the planet in a haze - like a thin fascia, golden and blue and purple, iridescent and milky in its glow. To Maul, it was _visceral_. Unfocused but blinding. Ephemeral, like the light seen at the edge of a shadow.

There was not enough time in the universe for him to languish in the feeling.

He has to boot up the controls quickly, as a shockwave of debris and darkness looms toward him from the pyramid. He navigates past the collapsing columns of stone and through the dotted spotlights of the upper crust. A small cargo ship takes off in the opposite direction as him - undoubtedly the ship of the two young Jedi - though he has no will to pursue it.

By the time he reaches upper orbit, Maul’s breathing is shallow and strained. He stares out at the stars before him. They were uncaring. Impartial. His chest constricts and his hearts beat out of sync within their tattooed prison. In the lack of gravity he floats, physically and mentally adrift. As he faces the vast, candid, wretched stars, he grips the thrusters hard. Painfully so. His shoulders sag, and his head falls to rest upon his forearms. Once again, her final presence alludes him. She is nowhere.

Maul’s eyes stare blankly before him as he screams.

Some deep part of him pleads to the Force for his ship to be held still. Dangled in orbit by a spitfire Togrutan, hell bent on keeping him from leaving her to die on a doomed Star Destroyer.

No such impediment comes.

He hates that nothing stops him. Nothing drags him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate Maul’s dialogue in Twilight of the Apprentice when Ezra activates the holocron/battle station and he’s fighting with Ahsoka. So we are just. Ignoring that. I prefered to show Maul’s crazed state via action/imagery, not the dialogue (as is necessary for a cartoon like Rebels). Limitations of media and all… I understand why they did what they did. But I don’t like it lol.
> 
> Again, thanks to all the readers who kept me going with this! Y’all who commented, all y’all who’ve given kudos, and all y’all who have been quietly part of the journey… Y'all are my lifeblood. I love u. Take care of yourself and others <3

**Author's Note:**

> Star wars side blog is https://starsideart.tumblr.com/ where I will occasionally post updates/art related to this fic, or the franchise in general!  
> \---  
> Edit log:  
> Fic is done! I will do a final typo check/update of the whole thing in the coming weeks, but no major edits will be added :)


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